OP-ED: Fashionably Late: No Longer Fashionable?
My Tenure as a ‘Cool’ Guy
Hi, my name is Ronald M. Deegan and I’m a sophomore here at Georgetown. I haven’t always been the most popular kid (lets just say I know what its like to have tacos and pies “accidentally fall on you”). Anyway, my father is a prominent lawyer in New York and he recently signed a new client who I figured could solve all of my unpopular woes.
When I heard that Henry Winkler (The Fonz from ‘Happy Days’) would now be represented by my father, I felt closer to that day when girls would be asking me for my cellular telephone number. As soon as I received the news, I quickly contacted The Fonz, who acted rather aloof (which I later found out was just cool person trick), and asked him for some advice to help me climb the social ladder here at Georgetown.
He agreed to give me one great piece of advice per week and in return all I had to do was limit my phone calls to him and address him as Henry, not The Fonz. Cool people are so modest!
Cool tip number one was to arrive fashionably late. I took his words to heart and incorporated this into every part of my day last Friday. I woke up at 8:13 (15 minutes later than usual!!), but was too nervous to eat my breakfast. Next, I arrived at my first class fifteen minutes late. Unfortunately we were having a test in Organic Chemistry and my tardiness resulted in several dirty looks from an already dirty looking professor and an inability to answer most of the questions on the test. But, I didn’t care about this scholastic failure because I figured that now I would be playing the “bad boy” card, thus becoming more cool.
I had planned on going to Yates at 1:00, but instead used The Fonz’s fifteen-minute plan. When I got there late, people were so awed at my coolness that they wouldn’t even talk to me!
When I got home, I decided to hang out, watch some TV, and gear up for a big night of improving my social status. While my ear was practically glued to my neighbor’s door, I heard that there was supposed to be a party in Henle 48 at 10:15. This was my big chance! I had dreams of girls talking to me, beer not being spilled on me, and getting a cool nickname like ‘R-Dawg.’
However, when I arrived at the party (at 10:30!), the only person there was a really intimidating DPS officer named Carl. But I was resilient, and I decided to trail the awkward mass of freshman, which led back to New South. I followed them all the way until they piled into some kid’s room on the third floor. With my extra minutes I headed to my dorm room to gel my hair, brush my teeth and practice pick up lines in the mirror. When I came back and knocked on the kid’s door and asked if this was where the party was, all the kids laughed really hard and then slammed the door in my face.
I can honestly say that being cool is really tough and now I sort of understand those times when my mom used to tell me cool kids were really unhappy on the inside. Hopefully things will work out better next weekend.
