On Being Cool.

My parents were pretty cool. Sure, it took some time for me to realize it-about 50 years-but once I really thought about how they lived their lives, I was impressed by just how cool they really were. No, they didn't set any trends. They didn't even participate much in trends. Nor were they particularly talented. In fact, they were pretty ordinary, except for one thing:

Flamingo Pink shutters. And a front door to match. Not Pale Pink, or Rose Pink, but bright, shocking Flamingo Pink that you could almost hear on a bright summer day. It was actually more of a “Shocking Pink”, but my parent's kept saying it was Flamingo Pink, so who was I to argue?

While this may have been normal in parts of Miami or other communities further south, in Northern Virginia, just outside of Washington D.C. it was not the norm.

When my parents bought the house I grew up in, a nice 3 bedroom, brick split level ranch, the ornamental shutters were painted white. This wouldn't do, because my mother's favorite color was Flamingo Pink (or alternately Coral Pink). The house was brand new. The neighborhood was still undergoing construction, so we didn't even have grass growing in the yard, just the weird green stuff they sprayed on lawns back then to make it look better until the grass seed took root. Yet, the first thing my father did was paint the shutters Flamingo Pink.

As the neighborhood grew, everyone else kept their shutters white, or some other innocuous color such as gray, slate blue, maybe a pale yellow. Occasionally black (which got the kids in the neighborhood telling stories about the evil things that went on there). People driving by our house were immediately struck by just how much the shutters stood out not only from the the 30 foot high brick wall, but from every other house in the neighborhood.

My mother didn't care: that was her favorite color. My father loved my mother enough to do whatever he could to make her happy, even if he knew there were some comments about other families in the neighborhood about just how shockingly pink our shutters were. I remember at times I wished my parents were better at conforming, shutter-wise, to the standards of the neighborhood. At other times I felt pride in being different.

It wasn't until years later, when I was old enough to stop caring if people snickered at how I dressed or looked, that I realized how utterly cool those pink shutters, and my parents, were.

You see, coolness is a matter of sticking to what you want to do, not out of rebellion or trying to look special, but simply because it makes you happy. A lot of people think being cool consists of dressing, acting and speaking in a way that others desire to emulate. That's not really being cool, it's being pretentious. That's because genuine coolness requires some originality. Without originality, attempts at being cool just end up as follow the fad efforts that really only impress other unoriginal thinkers.

Being different just to make a statement or rebel from the norm isn't necessarily cool either. It's often just being childish. That's because another factor in being truly cool, besides originality, is self-confidence. Rebellion isn't a sign of self-confidence. In fact, it's usually a sign of insecurity or resentment. Real self-confidence is following a preferred path because that path involves contentment, satisfaction and happiness.

My parents had the self-confidence that comes from loving each other enough to be willing to please each other without concern as to what others thought about it. You don't get much cooler than that.

Shocking Flamingo Pink shutters in a neighborhood of pastel or earth tone shutters certainly requires a degree of self-confidence.

That coolness on the part of my parents extended to how they landscaped the big slope that made up a large part of the back yard. After laying in several tons of blue granite walls and concrete walkways to keep things from sliding away in a heavy rain, we planted a ton, literally, of creeping phlox in white, blue and, yes, pink. After they began creeping (as is their purpose) the entire hill would erupt in a riotous mosaic of white, blue and pink every summer. People driving by would slow down to look at the sight, it was so glorious. They would of course see the Flamingo Pink shutters as well.

I like to think they would drive off muttering “That was so cool”.