"...all horrors are dulled by routine."
~Roberto Bolaño

If you were cool in high school
you didn't ask too many questions.
You could tell who'd been to last night's
big metal concert by the new t-shirts in the hallways.
You didn't have to ask
and that's what cool was:
the ability to deduce,
to know without asking.
And the pressure to simulate coolness
means not asking when you don't know,
which is why kids grow ever more stupid.

~David Berman, from "Self-Portrait at 28"