The cool-detector

“What is it”, asked Atlanta, settling herself behind the wheel of a male friend’s car, which she drives once a week on an errand, and adjusting her seat, “about sitting so low? Why do they always sit so low? “

Atlanta is tall, the owner of the car is short. Like me, who am also tall, Atlanta finds that sitting higher gives her better field of vision, and therefore better control of the car; meaning that the car’s owner, who is even shorter than she, should, in order to see around as well as she does, sit even higher than she does; but he sits lower. Why, Atlanta puzzles.

Atlanta does not understand that the reason why the owner of the car always adjusts his seat lower is the same reason why her husband painted his bicycle Darth-Vader black. The reason is — “cool”.

Like me, Atlanta does not get “cool”. Like me, Atlanta was born with a defective brain — a brain without the cool-detector.

One reason why, after running a series of more or less mildly successful businessness, I am still not a billionaire is that, I, too, do not get “cool”. I could have never invented Nike shoes, or Facebook, or Instagram, or bell bottom pants, or the Rubik’s cube; it just would have never, not in a million years, occured to me that those things are in any way cool.

I don’t get cool. I get handsome/beautiful/graceful. I get well dressed (meaning dressed to look decent as well as attractive). I get smelling nice.

But “cool” is and has always been beyond me, it has always left me confused and puzzled and helpless. I am just… cool-blind.