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Cool For Sale Posting Date: Mar 23 2008 12:50AM The first thing I ever bought that was cool cost $1.60. I picked it up at the Hobby Shop in Westcliffe Mall and paid with a dollar bill and a fist of mismatched change. I didn’t have enough to cover the tax, but the kid at the cash register let it slide. Now there’s some guy out there who has been carrying my eleven cent debt since 1977. With interest, it’s up to at least half a buck now.
The item in question was a flimsy glow-in-the-dark sword that I convinced myself was a Star Wars lightsaber. I got it home and held it under a lamp for about fourteen seconds, which was about as long as I could possibly wait, and then turned off the light went all Obi-Wan Kenobi on my orange bedspread.
The glow from the lightsaber was feeble and its staying power was fruit-fly-esque, but I battered the bejeezus out of my mattress until the glowiness was gone completely and I had to resort to closing my eyes and pretending that I was using the Force.
That was $1.60 flushed right down the toilet.
The next time I remember trying to purchase a little cool, I was in ninth grade. I splashed the cash all over a Big Steel Man like I was some kind of gangsta before “gangsta” was even a word. I bought a big-collar Pierre Cardin dress shirt in grey and an argyle knit vest that was off the hook. It was maroon and grey, as I recall, and my plan was to wear it with the shirt in a coordinated ensemble of cooliosity.
I wore the shirt a few times, but the vest only made it to the second wearing before some girl with larger-than-average breasts (and therefore, significant credibility in my grade nine world) mentioned that argyle was only preppie if it was a light colour. The vest never saw the light of day after that and I’m pretty sure it went to Goodwill about nine years later. I think I saw it the other day behind Rod Black in a World Vision television commercial.
Once I got a real job and started bringing in the paycheques, I began spending all my would-be-cool coin on shoes. Nikes mostly, in size twelve. I had to wear three pairs of socks at a minimum to make them fit and I had to yank the laces tighter than a Jane Austen corset, but damned if I didn’t have the certifiably biggest feet of any guy under six foot three at Sir Allan MacNab Secondary School. These things are important to you in high school until you roll your ankle like a drunk taking a corner in Suzuki Sidekick.
Then I got my first full-time job and I snagged me a sweet Acura Integra not quite new and I was the King of the World for forty-eight months at $403 per. You have to remember that this was back before Acuras became nothing more than rebranded Honda Civics. My ride was sweet, with seven E’s. Sweeeeeeet.
Then a transport truck fishtailed the crap out of my driver’s side in a snowstorm and five month later a couple of nefarious characters emptied it out of a tidy selection of post-factory electronics and the magic was gone. Almost a year to the day after my final payment, I traded it in on straight-from-the-factory Honda CRV and got my mojo back.
Now, I’m considering buying one of those cargo boxes for the top my car. You can get into the market for a few hundred dollars if all you want is a couple of locking crossbars and a plastic shoe box clamped to your roof rails. But you can go another way. You can go top-of-the-line and be cool. Get yourself one of those sweeeeeeet Thule boxes that are more aerodynamic than a downwind fart. Wrap that bad boy in enough carbon fibre to reinforce the Space Shuttle and slap a tail fin on that bad boy to enhance the handling of your station wagon and you are one cool son of a bitch.
What do you think? Should I spend the money? |
