  Yesterday I went to one of my favorite places to watch people, a local dirty college coffee house. I was sitting in the hot sun reading an appropriately pretentious-cool book ( urlLink Lipstick Traces: A secret history of the 20th century by Griel Marcus) when I noticed these two girls sitting near me, studying for their finals. I'm sure they were high school and they were so perfectly trendy it was unbelievable. It was not the kind of "plastics" trendy, but the "I'm not trying so hard, but I'm so counter culture, look at this bracelet I got at Claire's! " bleached hair, pink eye shadow, very eighties punk sheik. . . It was great. Oh how I remember when I was in high school and tried to rebel, being so perfectly what urlLink seventeen magazine said was cool, which had been another generation's counter culture.
I, however, was no better. The only reason I went to that coffee shop was that I'd just gotten a killer new urlLink T-shirt I was wearing that day and I didn't want it's first day to be in my house. I had a need to take this new shirt out, show it off to the world, and show the world how cool I am because I have this shirt. It really is cute. 
