Someone once told me "be cool." It wasn't my friend encouraging me to don my Ray-Bans when walking down Rugby Road, nor was it my sister telling me to cool it when jumping around the apartment Friday afternoon. It was my dad. He is not a glib person, so when he says something, he means it.
But what does "be cool" even mean? To decide to "be cool" is not arbitrary; it cannot be made amid the whir of other decisions. It takes time, it takes patience. It is a lifestyle years in the making.
Daddy was born, well, a long time ago. He grew up in a neighborhood in a time when kids ran around freely, sledding down hills of ice or waterskiing in the nude down the river. He and his friends from back then are still friends today, and they haven't changed much. The only difference is that instead of seeing my father acting out his shenanigans, I hear about them, on the porch, wishing all the while that I had shenanigans worthy of a good story.
Not to say I don't have my share of shenanigans to report. They are the kind that perfectly fill in the space between two friends on a Sunday afternoon. Not the kind my mother wants to hear about while eating dinner at home; not the kind she wants my teenage brother to get too many tips from. The kind I could tell Daddy. The kind that may even be comparable to his undergraduate years. I want to measure up to those slowly spun tales of teenage rebellion and revelry. I want to impress with my list of "guess what I conquered this weekend that left me completely useless the rest of the week!"
But lately my attempts to impress have gotten me more looks of concern than cheers and applause. I didn't understand at first. I was just trying to bridge the generational gap with my tales of college fun. Daddy, the geologist, doesn't understand why I idolize O'Connor or what exactly could possess me to be an English major. So I give him information he can digest - parties, late-nights, irresponsibility. Instead of pats on the back or glowing admiration I simply receive two words of admonition: "Be cool."
A warning? A warning from my father who has always been the life of the party? I was offended. Was it because I'm a girl? Then I was embarrassed - my parents think I'll never do anything worthwhile. And then I understood.
I've always envied Daddy's tales of growing up. It's safe to say that I never sledded down hills of ice or waterskied naked. Snow sufficed, and I can barely knee-board. My idea of fun as a child was setting up tiny villages with hundreds of tiny toys and teaming up with my sister to torture my poor baby brother. Honestly, I can barely remember my childhood. I think I've always wanted to be older than I am - which leaves me with a lot more wondering than experiencing.
Once I reached an age - now - that was old enough for my musings, I began to act. I aimed to have as much fun in college as my father did. The timing wasn't right for my childhood to be filled with antics, so I would make the most of my young adulthood. I sought out trouble with my peers and laughed about it the morning after. I tried to imitate the "work hard, play hard" mantra that everyone seemed to be toting. I imitated it so well that I eventually followed my own mantra: "play hard, sleep often."
My attempts to construct a worthy tale to tell my father, the master of narrative, had failed. My stories did not revolve around innocent fun, the kind that existed years and years ago. They revolved around something that I merely deemed fun. Fun isn't supposed to sap all the energy from your system; fun isn't supposed to make you fling your apartment key into oblivion and leave you homeless. Daddy had created his fun to supplement his happiness. I created fun because I thought that's what you were supposed to do.
As most of you are well aware, it is not as simple as "work hard, play hard." There is too much in between that gets in the way. Too often we find ourselves, as my mother would say, doing "everything to excess." Pull an all-nighter Wednesday, don't remember Thursday night. Repeat next week, and the week after. Until you're not even sure if you're having fun anymore.
So be cool. Moderate. Take care of yourself before you take care of your weekend wishes. There's too much pressure to do everything, to be everywhere. I can already feel the itch of the weekend pulling me forward into the land of zero productivity. I won't ignore it but I won't drop everything and run after it either. I'm just going to slow down, like my father does when he's about to tell an epic tale, and prepare for a worthy story of my own.
Maybe it's time to find those different ideas of fun. My innocence is gone, or at least diminishing, and I need to focus on growing up, too.
Mary Scott's column runs biweekly Wednesdays. She can be reached atms.hardaway@cavalierdaily.com.
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