Take Note

Scott reminded me of this while we were eating dinner. I looked it up in Actual Air. I had forgotten about this old poem but it still rings very true.

"If you were cool in high school
you didn't ask too many questions.
You could tell who'd been to last night's
big metal concert by the new t-shirts in the hallways.
You didn't have to ask
and that's what cool was:
the ability to deduce,
to know without asking.
And the pressure to simulate coolness
means not asking when you don't know,
which is why kids grow ever more stupid."

-From "Self-Portrait at 28" by David Berman