You grew up, I think, watching movies and TV shows full of the cool kid archetype. The cool kid was good-looking and confident, had boundless social goodwill with others (usually even the grownups) and got away with being mean to the not-so-cool kid: the shy, the smart, the self-aware, the try-hard, the poor, the awkward, the lonely. The cool kid usually had hair which was a sinister shade of blond, while the outcast (never blond) was inevitably the hero. You liked these stories—everyone liked these stories—because they taught you that you did not deserve to be treated badly, that one day the cool kids in your own benighted school would be penalized (probably publicly) for their meanness, and that all underdogs would ultimately win love, respect, admiration, and maybe the country of Genovia.

Of course the word cool, when applied to a person’s general demeanor, really just means that you have social capital, that you are well-liked without seeming to make too much of an effort, that you carry yourself with confidence. But a word is never just a word, so for most of us who have ever had the excruciating gift of being an adolescent, “cool” carries the weight of all of the above. Even now, all these years into adulthood, there’s cool food and cool clothes and cool music and cool cars and cool shoes and cool water tumblers and cool bedroom furniture and probably cool gas stations, and God forbid any of us ever forget it.

And there are still cool kids. Wherever people gather, however old they are, they seem to eventually stratify, and some effortless folks rise buoyant to the top. Who these people are depends on context. Some groups of adults still unfortunately reward the mean among us, allowing them to rule: those who call the new hire “weird” behind their back, who text their friends under the table when the woman they don’t like speaks up in a meeting, who form ranks and never break them, who are horrified at the thought of inviting an outsider to book club or run club or crochet club. I hope you have managed to avoid the murky communities that foster this kind of adult cool kid. 

You probably have. You probably know that in many places it is cool to be the welcomer, the warm laugher, the one who remembers everybody’s names, who tells good stories and better jokes, who listens, who shares their cool resources indiscriminately. In the right sort of adulthood, the cool kid is the kind one.

But you cannot, under any circumstances, tell them that they’re cool. That is the rule. Sure, they will be flattered that they are well-liked, but the truth of the matter is, they watched the same movies you did when you were all twelve. They, like you, probably identified with the underdog’s journey, and they too are innately suspicious of blondes for no good reason on God’s green earth. If you tell them they are cool they will worry that rather than “having friends,” which is what they thought they were doing, they have actually been existing in a semi-isolated sphere of potentially sinister social power, awaiting their eventual humiliation which may well take place on the stage of a literal school auditorium.

I mean, fine, if they actually are as confident as being “cool” implies, they won’t worry about all that. But you still can’t tell them, because none of us like to look at our most immediate spheres of influence and think about some people having more social capital than others. And to some extent, that’s the right impulse. “Cool” is a juvenile concept. Yet the things we learn as children shape our core indelibly—they mold our bones.

And maybe the part of what “cool” has always meant to us that we can’t shake is that to be cool means to be effortless, not to have to try—not even a little bit—and still succeed anyway. But, of course, that describes none of us, not a single solitary one. We all put in so much effort. If we are accomplishing anything positive—even simple kindnesses—on a regular basis, then we are trying. So adult cool kids are kind of a mirage. If you get to know them well enough to see behind the curtain where all the strivings and the worries and the failures and the getting back up and dusting themselves off live, you will find no longer a cool kid, but a person: an underdog who does not want to have their hair laughed at and who would probably very much like to be your friend. (And so you should be. That would be cool of you.)