Defending My Cool

It has come to my attention that my children may not realize just how cool I am. A comment was made, apparently I’m too ‘old’ to understand something, there was a little generational head-butting.

I get it. To some people, I’m just mom. I cook. I clean. I make rules and roll my eyes and fold laundry and say things like, “Make good choices!” and, “Stay hydrated!” Not terribly cool, on the surface.

But I’d like to clarify.

I am cool. So cool. You don’t even know cool, that’s how cool.

For instance -

I can count to ten in five languages and sing the French national anthem.

I have the longest second metatarsal that my foot doctor has ever seen.

I was the fastest kid in elementary school, the star pitcher of the softball team and lethal with a bat (legally lethal). Boys would walk to the corner store and deliver Bubble Yum to the pitcher’s mound for me during practices (they gave the second basegirl gum, too, but she wasn’t the pitcher).

My great-grandmother was a half-blood Mohegan Rosicrucian. She held séances and terrified my father throughout his childhood. Here’s an image of their Temple of the Rosy Cross, “on wheels to signify that it can go to any place, and suspended from Heaven by a rope…” . This is cool, right?

My father was a drummer in a house band in 1950’s Washington, D.C. He played with Bo Diddley and Otis Redding. Cool by association, I am. He wanted to name me Eric, as in Dolphy, and if that doesn’t mean much to you, then listen to this and try to deny the cool. (As it happened, I wasn’t a boy so they gave me 1964’s most popular girl’s name instead — the cool went right out the window with the imagination.)

I saw Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee at the Cellar Door as a child. For those of you who don’t know, this gets me so many extra cool points.

I also saw Taj Mahal and Buddy Guy, Koko Taylor and Bonnie Raitt when she was young and true blue. I saw Little Feat at the Warner Theatre in D.C. but it was, sadly, post-Lowell. A toothless, Lowell-less Feat.

I touched Jackson Browne’s bus — put my whole hand flat up on the thing (this is not a metaphor). There were clove cigarettes and earrings with feathers and shells. Army surplus bags and diaphanous tasseled garments.

I gate-crashed a Grateful Dead show at Cole Field House as a teen (but it was because of a cute, dumb boy and it was the Dead — always and forever insufferable, verging on the uncool).

But, extra cool, I saw Sun Ra and his Arkestra at the Old Post Office in D.C. I recently heard the sad news that The Donald has his orange mitts all over the stately historic building, so the cool is somewhat sullied. But I saw Sun and, let me tell you, space really is the place.

John Hammond, Jr. flirted wildly with me in a bar long ago, but my first husband showed up and ruined it. Again, for those of you in the dark, Johnny Hammond is monumentally cool (as is his father) and I get so many extra points for this.

I saw Prince’s Purple Rain tour, possibly the most astonishingly cool show ever, and I was so badass in my spike heel black leather boots, you just don’t even know. It’s interesting what some funk and the right shoes will do for your swagger.

In my restaurant days, I served Lesley Gore (of ‘It’s My Party’ fame) who was, oddly, alone. She was aloof, but not unkind, and she did not cry.

I also waited on Sylvester Stallone and Brigitte Nielsen. She was twice his height and threw her skinny bejeweled arm in the air and snapped her fingers all night long, like I was a retriever. He held court at the head of the table and, one by one, his party of 17 came to kneel at his knee for a moment with the king. He swanned into the kitchen with two bodyguards at the busiest possible moment of a Saturday night to grace us with his presence. I came nose to nose with him at the door and he looked at me like I was a voile curtain. That is to say, he didn’t look at me at all — he looked through me. He left a 10% tip at our very high-end French restaurant just after he graced the cover of Forbes as the highest paid actor of the year. Categorically not cool. Cool story, though.

I rode up a forgotten Greek mountain on the back of a motorcycle, clinging to a hot Greek boy (who also happened to be an asshat). I wandered the Acropolis in hand-woven sandals feeling beautiful and, later in the agora at the foot of the great citadel, I accidentally smashed a jeweler’s glass case with my giant stupid camera. Perhaps that part should be omitted from the cool chronicles.

I stood in the rain at the base of the Temple of Kukulkan at Chichen Itza, wearing a plastic trash bag and drenched in awe. (Full disclosure — I wasn’t cool enough to ascend the Mesoamerican pyramid, as the steps were so narrow and high and I was scared. They were really narrow and high!)

And, cool miracle, I grew four humans in my body and then pushed them out of my body without the benefit of big pharma or even hospitals. I spent close to ten years of my life feeding them with my body. Women are just inherently capable of so much cool, aren’t they?

So be careful little ones or I’ll have to tell you about marching on Washington or 17th century Dutch art or about that time at the National Cathedral when — never mind. I’ll tell you about the German Shepherd that went for my jugular or my days as an equestrienne. So many stories, so much cool, so many things I can’t even tell you. I almost named one of you Thelonious. You have no idea what you’re dealing with.

Thanks Gutbloom for the kind edits and for tolerating my silly self-indulgence.