22nd
Back When I Was Cool
I am listening to the web radio station on iTunes called 100Hitz Indie Rock, and it is making me feel cool… cool like I used to feel back when I worked at Abercrombie + Fitch, back when I WAS “cool.”
You are probably a little shocked to find out about this part of my history, but no one ever said that all of the history of Chuck was pretty. Yes, I worked at Abercrombie + Fitch. I layered. I acted like I was too good to talk to people. I smiled a lot… to myself, as I tapped my toes to some super cool new tunes from artists like John Mayer and sleeper hits from bands like the Violent Femmes. I wanted to run through the halls of my high school, I really did.
Hey, it was a pretty sweet gig, for me. I was a greeter… No I didn’t stand there with my shirt off, but I did just stand there looking cool, so cool. I was good at my job. I am very good at standing around. It’s listed as a skill on my resume. Folding clothes and ringing people up were for the others. Me, I just had to look cool and smile and laugh a lot.
My job was to make simpletons willing to drop $50 on a t-shirt think that they would be cool enough to talk to me once they were layered and branded out, by not talking to them… ignoring them… treating them like they were nothing, and laughing about things that they couldn’t possibly understand because they didn’t have a short sleeved button up shirt, a retro destroyed wash clam bake slumber party t-shirt, and matching cargo shorts, held up by a double buckle belt. Got to love the double buckle belt.
If I was so good at my job, why did I leave? I could be a regional manager by now. Well, as I think you have all figured out by now… I’m not really that cool, but listening to this web radio station is making me forget about not being cool, and making me remember the time in my life that I actually thought that I was cool, that there was such a thing.
