...Back in my college days, the word 'cool' was used very often...it meant a thing, person, or situation that was excellent, that FAR exceeded the norm.
I had a good friend, a huge guy, who had a very powerful bass/baritone voice. He was a vocal major, and I almost swooned the first time I heard him sing.
We never got intimate, he had a serious G/F, but often we would study music together, or have a soda at the Food Court.
Once, over sodas, we started talking about what it meant when a person was 'cool'. Of course, we couldn't verbally explain it very well, and he cut to the chase, and said, "A person who is 'cool' looks like this"...and he struck a rather interesting pose. My eyes got briefly wide, and I said, "No, a 'cool' person looks like this", and struck a more elaborate pose, with what I believed was a 'cool' look on my face. He just shook his head, and said, "You are completely wrong, a 'cool' person looks like this", and struck a more outrageous pose.
This continued for about 15 minutes...and other students were starting to laugh...we got rather creative in how we held our bodies, and shaped our faces.
We carried on our perception of what it meant to be 'cool' during the rest of the semester, and some other students caught on to our joke. Once, the two of us were standing outside a classroom, leaning against the wall, with our bodies and faces shaped into what we believed were 'cool' poses. And, of course, we ignored ALL of the other students, after all, we were 'cool'. A woman came up and tried to talk to us, and we briefly looked at her, and then crossed our arms and looked across the campus. One of my friends quickly came over, and led the woman away, and said..."They won't talk to you now." The woman asked..."Why?"...and my friend whispered..."Because they are being 'cool'.
But the funniest one was when we were sitting together at a student piano recital. We heard a toilet flush during a brief rest in the performance, and he looked over at me, and crossed his arms, and whispered..."Not cool". It took all of my self-control to nod, cross my arms, and whisper back..."Agreed, not cool." After all, getting an attack of the 'atomic giggles' during a piano recital is certainly not 'cool'.
