Humans are social animals. As social beings we do our best in our daily lives to fit in or be likeable and “cool.” Sometimes in social situations one can be cool or act cool and it

works. Despite our best efforts and resolve, sometimes it backfires and you are left being definitively “uncool.” Let us take two such demonstrations. After all, sometimes you are

cool and sometimes you are not cool. (Note: In each anecdote the names have been changed or omitted to protect the not so innocent.)

Cool:

Say you are at a local pizza restaurant with a few friends for a bite to eat. The waitress attends your table and acts kind of shy and flirtatious as she takes your order. A rather cool fellow, we’ll call him Mr. Z, is striking up a conversation and cracking jokes with said waitress.

As the night progresses, his friends decide that she is flirting with him and obviously is dying for his number, so he should put his newly printed business cards to work by placing his phone number on one and leaving it with the tip for the waitress. He asks for a pen, and she gives it with a smile, and everyone is convinced he’s in. Well, as fate would have it on her last trip to the table she speaks up. Unfortunately for Mr. Z, instead of asking about him, she turns to his friend and asks, “This may sound like a silly question, but do you write for the Northern Star?”

Now of course, the four friends are in jovial laughter because Mr. Z has been thwarted and it was someone else she had her eye on at the table. When asked why we are all laughing, the columnist simply replies that he gets that all the time.

Now of course he feels like a rock star rather than a columnist, and thus must have emanated coolness, or something like it. Meanwhile Mr. Z is stuck because he can’t leave the card or the waitress would believe it to be the columnist’s. Mr. Z, uncool; columnist, cool.

Uncool:

Now when most people drive their cars, they usually take a gander at that little gauge that reads somewhere between E and F, indicating the amount of fuel the vehicle has in it. Certain people, however, have difficulty looking at that gauge; a certain Northern Star columnist is one of them. That columnist has a craving for french fries at a local eatery and decides to make a late night run to get some eats. After ordering the fries at the drive-thru, there is a somewhat lengthy wait in line. Well, sure enough, the car dies in the middle of the drive-thru line. Well, this determination is rather easy to make — running out of gas is embarrassing in and of itself. Running out of gas in a crowded drive-thru line is infinitely worse. So there is not much left to do but throw the car in neutral and push it through the drive thru.

Well, certainly he does not look very cool while pushing a dead car past the drive thru window with the guy on the other side giving a funny and rather quizzical look. It is increasingly embarrassing when there is a slight slope in the drive, so that in order to actually get the truck into a parking spot, he needs to rock it back and forth a few times.

So then he must walk to the gas station and, of course, the only gas can holds one-half gallon of gas. So in order to actually get enough gas into the car for it to start, he needs to make three trips. Now he is walking back and forth between the gas station and the restaurant with a tiny little gas can with the hopes of starting the car.

Alas, the car is officially broken because despite the presence of gas, the car will not start and must be towed. So by the time he is able to walk into the restaurant to get some fries, he is

sweaty and smells like gas and everyone is probably laughing at him already because they just saw him pushing his car back and forth in the parking lot. Needless to say, sometimes despite his best efforts, he is just not cool.

So why make a big deal out of this cool and uncool issue and what is the point of these stories and this column? Well, perhaps the lesson is that events happen in our lives that we may or may not have control over, and our reactions to those events may or may not be the ones that seem to be the most attractive or desirable socially. After all, we all make mistakes and we all do things right once in awhile. If you get too hung up on maintaining an image of coolness, you can end up being a shallow person who is never being true to yourself. After all, there is nothing really cool about being shallow. We should just take things in stride and understand that there is no such person as “The Fonz,” and we certainly don’t have to pretend we are like him in order for people to have a high regard for us as people.