I get nervous around people who are cooler than me. But not cooler than me by adult standards - most people I know are cooler than me by adult standards and I get along with them just fine. No, I get nervous around adults who are cooler than me by adolescent standards. Someone who comes across as the kind of person who would have been terribly cool and confident in high school - the kind of person on whom my adolescent self would have had a distant crush (even though my adult self doesn't really develop crushes, having a consistent outlet for those energies). And the thing is, when I get into this weird mental place where I'm assessing other adults by adolescent standards, I'm comparing them with my adolescent self. Any cool points that I may have gained in the past seven or so years simply don't count in this bizarre exercise. I'm essentially feeling nervous or intimidated by the lady in the store or the guy who works at the LCBO because I perceive that they were cool adolescents, and their adult selves are cooler than my adolescent self was.
This is so not cool.
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