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Last Update: 08.15.03

The top 10 things all the cool kids have

10. A high insurance bill. Just because you wrecked that brand new SUV that your parents bought them on their 16th birthday while driving drunk from a wild party doesn't mean you aren't still cool. I mean, you made it to the point where the insurance people gave up using dollars and cents and just give you nice round numbers to make it easier for them to do the paperwork. That has got be worth a medal or something. No, really. It's worth a medal. Your parents had to sell that medal they won to pay for it.

9. An acoustic guitar. That way you can play crappy ballads in the commons of your high school to show everybody how sensitive you are. Just look at John Mayer, you can't get much cooler than that guy. Or maybe you can...you could play his songs wrong since his chords are too hard for you, and sing out of tune. Now that's what I call music!

8. A whole lot of great friends. Despite the fact that they are completely indistinguishable from one another and always talk about each other behind their backs, no cool kid is complete without them. The reasoning behind this is clear: when one of you wrecks his SUV, the rest of you need an SUV to pile into so you can make it home only a few hours past curfew and tell your gullible parents that the reason you're late is because you were out doing community service, and had nothing to do with drugs and beer. If they inquire about the way you seem drunk, admit that you decided to go out and have a few beers with the homeless guy that you built a house for, because you didn't want to decline his hospitality.

7. A baseball hat. Turned any way but forwards, a baseball hat can improve your coolness. If you turn the hat forwards it blocks your view of the sun, I hate that. Also, if possible, wear a bandana underneath. It doesn't matter if you hate the team on the hat as long as they have a cool logo.

6. A change of majors. Since you obviously have no clue what you want to do with your life (and why should I blame you—I can't come up with any possible way that you could benefit society, either), and since your parents will pay for your college anyway no matter how many years you stay there, you may as well switch majors a few times. Business, yodeling, interpretive yoga, and basket weaving are all very demanding, though, so I'm sure your impressive array of Bs and Cs will land you a job somewhere. Also remember to take bowling your last semester, since you don't have any need to pad your schedule with classes that will make your resume look better.

5. Cigarettes and strong cologne. These two are best taken in excess. The goal is to render yourself completely undifferentiated from all of your friends in every way, such that not even a dog can tell you apart. They could hand it a shirt that you were wearing before the kidnapping, and it would track its way straight to the nearest frat party, even though you're face down in the creek dead (and leaving a 5 mile wide circle of barren wilderness around you, I might add, since no animal will come near the territory that you so clearly claimed with your bottle of ox urine).

4. Fun. Everybody knows that only the cool people have fun. In case they don't, though, spell it out for them. You could put it in your profiles online, for example. "Interests: having fun." This will remove anybody's doubts that you are a unique person, in case your oh-so-clever customized license plates weren't enough. Congratulations BG PMPN, I'm sure you're doing a lot of bag pumping down at the grocery store where you work. If they allowed longer license plates, maybe I'd remind you to go KLL YRSLF.

3. A credit card. Make sure you only use it for emergencies: emergency beer, emergency pizza for you and 10 friends, emergency strippers. Also great for buying friends.

2. A cell phone. If you don't have a cell phone nobody can call you wherever you are, which means you might miss an important opportunity to go somewhere and look suave, or to get nagged at for a few minutes. Also, if you get bored, you could just play games or take pictures or send instant messages or check your email or record your own MP3s or activate the laser gun, since you're not paying the bill anyway. Or, if you wanted those things, you could buy a computer, a camera, and a life.

1. A whole bunch of exes. After all, you don't get to be cool by being committed to people, you get to be cool by pretending to like people just long enough to steal their friends and maybe their virginity. You'll notice that lots of these exes are really ugly, and will probably be accounted for with an excuse that doesn't make sense. "Oh, that was just from my jealous-impaired reverse-psychology stress-hamster teen-angst psycho-bitch phase." Oh, I see. You mean puberty (or in their case, the 15 year "stupid phase"). That excuse doesn't work, because we all went through it, and some of us actually managed to come out of it without overweight stalker prostitutes hounding us for child support for something that we'd really rather forget.

If you don't have all of these things, you might as well forget about being cool.