Preface To It's Cool: He's Cool

("Is he cool?" "Yeah, he's cool." From this.)

For the purposes of this story I'm about to tell, I need you to know my father was an alcoholic & his drinking destroyed his marriage.  It also meant I basically grew up without a father.  When I did see him, he was invariably drunk.  & it was unpleasant.  So I grew to hate drinking &, because my young mind didn't really see much difference, drugs.

The weird thing is, drugs were everywhere in my youth.  Two of my older brothers were big potheads & I recently discovered that they were dealers at the time, too.  They had bongs & rolling papers everywhere.  I'm not sure I knew what they were - I guess I thought they were for tobacco or perhaps were some kind of trinket or knick knack.  Or I knew they were for marijuana & secretly scorned them.  I just know I took the anti-drug stuff in school quite literally.  I swore to myself I'd never drink or do drugs ever.

In the apartments where we lived there was a sweet fellow named Bubba.  He was a tough kid, he took a liking to me & my little brother, he would often stand up for us when my sister Karin's friends messed with us because we were in fact little pests.  In his own way, Bubba was cool like the Fonz.  He was gentle, soft-spoken, but obviously would get into a scrap at a moment's notice.  I liked hanging out with him because he was nice to me.  His best buddy Bobby - it's true, it was Bobby & Bubba - he hated us & I think Bubba enjoyed irking him by having us around.

One day I was in Bubba's apartment - I'll bet I was in sixth grade at the time - just hanging out & listening to Bubba tell stories - probably wildly exaggerated stories about his adventures, when a group of teenagers - & let's be clear, Bubba was probably just sixteen or seventeen years old himself - came into the apartment & had something with them.  It was a bag of grass.

Little me was entirely unaware what was going on.  As they opened the package on a table & took to preparing it for use, one of the teens - whom I'd never seen before - said, "Is he cool?"  Bubba didn't even look at me.  He said, "Yeah, he's cool."  I got side-eyed a bit after that.  & I figured out they what they were doing.  & what it was all about.

By & by I made an excuse to leave, obviously before the drug-doing would commence.  I was so incredibly angry.  I knew what "being cool" meant!  I didn't want to be that kind of "cool"!  How dare Bubba - who I thought was the coolest guy I knew - call me that kind of cool!  If that was cool, I never wanted to be cool, ever!

The truth is, I lost a lot of respect for him that day, & didn't really want to hang around with him any more after that. I never knew if he made any connection - he remained kind to me until he moved from the apartments.

As for me, I broke my promise about drinking & doing drugs at some point later.  I have however kept my word about being cool.  I have never in my life been cool.