I recently visited a brewery in Vermont. This brewery is known for its low-distribution, high-ABV IPA that was so in-demand at one point that I saw a single can of it selling in DC for $20. It had been a few years since we’d been to the brewery, and they had expanded considerably, adding a new tasting room and a lane by the sidewalk dedicated to drive-through pick-ups.
We were heading back to our car as a mid-90s Subaru wagon pulled into the pick-up lane. In the front seat were a man and a woman, both in their fifties or sixties, with gray hair, a bit longer than conventional, wearing earth tones. They were smiling as they pulled up, no doubt excited to be getting their hands on the coveted beer. Their car had New York plates and a storage rack on the roof covered in bumper stickers with progressive messages, logos from ski resorts and national parks, and one that read, “We used to be cool.”
If I met this couple out someplace, aprés ski or around a bonfire, I bet we would have agreed on most things, but my reaction to this bumper sticker was the same as I have when I see a Trump 2024 sticker or one proclaiming the awesomeness of the Second Amendment. As with those stickers, I did not want these people, who I didn’t know, to believe in this message. It felt so wrong, so incomplete, so beneath their dignity and mine.
We used to be cool. Coolness is a power wielded by the young, the sticker seems to say, so pardon me, because I am no longer young. Pardon me, for being here still, when I am gray and wrinkly and older than the demographic of this brewery. Pardon me, young man walking out with a four-pack, but we used to be like you, and now that we’re not — because this is the true message, that since we used to be cool, it must mean we are no longer — we’re sorry for what we now are.
When I was younger, I tried very hard to be cool. I might have appeared cool, but inside, I was cool’s opposite. Insecure, anxious, worried about how I looked and what I wore and measuring each word that came out of my mouth. I didn’t have wrinkles or gray hairs, but I made myself miserable.
The sticker seems to say that the couple in that Subaru wagon was cool at one time and now they are not, but I don’t buy it. I believe that they are cooler now because they know who they are, know what they like and know who they want to spend their time with.
Aging is a privilege. Coolness is a myth. If I thought it was cool to have bumper stickers on my car, that’s what mine would say.