The cool kids

Circumstances conspired this week to teach me a valuable lesson about what it means to fit in.

It all came about because work this week has been eerily quiet. Iain has been on holiday sunning himself in Greece (well, I say sunning but he’s strawberry blonde so he probably goes from nought to lobster in about 15 seconds) and for the last couple of days the rest of my team has also been absent. Some of them are swanning round the country having meetings in glamorous places like Manchester and the remainder have been on leave, soaking up the uncharacteristic heat that whacks you like a mallet the moment you leave the safety of an air conditioned office or funbus.

So I am all alone. Around me are nothing but empty desks – no chatter, no backchat, no macho posturing from my manager and nobody sounding far more important than anyone could possibly be on a conference call. To the untrained observer walking by it would look like I have cleared my little pod with a particularly pestilent parp. It’s been lovely.

There was only one fly in the ointment and that’s when Gemma told me on Monday that she wouldn’t be in for lunch the next day. Because while a working day without colleagues sounds almost as entertaining as a back to back Jeremy Kyle marathon and all the Green and Blacks ice cream a person can comfortably consume, a working day without lunch is too horrendous to even contemplate. Extreme measures were called for.

In the bay next to mine is the Other Team. Most of the people in it are random telecoms guys I barely know who reek of electricity pylons and fibre optic cable but it also houses Mandy (famous for coveting other people’s food in the fridge) and Abi (mainly famous for occasionally – and unjustifiably I might add – being mistaken for a transsexual). They always lunch with their buddies within view of the table where Iain, Gemma and I discuss smut and the major events of the day. And they always seem to have equal and opposite fun to us – I assume they don’t have to rely on knob gags and filth but have sensible, cultured conversations. Time to find out, I thought. So I sent Mandy an IM saying what a tragedy it was that I was all my ownsome on Tuesday. Within minutes the reply pinged back saying “why not come to lunch with us?”

I had arrived. I was lunching with the cool kids.

I was beside myself with excitement that night planning for the big event. I made a mental note not to say anything too inappropriate or mention clunge (not after the near disaster of the work barbecue last week). My packed lunch presented a particular set of challenges. My friend Natalie told me that Ben 10 lunchboxes were all the rage, but I didn’t even know what one of those was. I had no chance. I didn’t even have a lunchbox they could gawp at because I take my sarnies to work in a clear plastic ziplock bag. And to make matters worse, all I had in the house was a packet of heavily seeded rolls. What would the cool kids think if I turned up with my transparent sandwich bodybag, got my baps out and spilled my seed all over the table?

I’d look like a flashing, masturbating serial killer. There was nothing for it, I’d have to buy something in the canteen.

The day dawned bright and sunny. I hopped through town with a spring in my step and bounded onto the funbus with a mocha in my hand and a smile on my face. Maybe it was hot as balls, maybe I would be on my own in the office all day, maybe I’ll never break the hundred follower barrier or have that threesome but who gives a fuck? I was lunching with the cool kids and that’s what counts.

I passed Mandy in the corridor at about half ten. “All right there lunch buddy?” she said. It was all I could do not to try and high five her.

High fiving is not cool. Deep down, I know that.

At about twelve o’clock one of my suppliers swung by my desk. He asked if I was heading down for lunch and I took great pride in telling him I had already arranged to go with someone else. Someone cool, I wanted to tell him. But I didn’t, because that too is not cool. So off he went. I watched him wander away from my solitary desk thinking So long Nigel, I’m just too cool for lunch with you.

I first started to wonder whether something was up at about ten past one. After all, surely lunching that late isn’t cool? No doubt Mandy and her chums were stuck on a call or something. Ten minutes later I sent her an IM and the response came back. They were too busy, too cool for lunch. I’m not sure she would even have remembered to tell me if I hadn’t been so gauche that I asked.

I’d been fucking stood up.

I trudged downstairs, picked up a stodgy sandwich and took it to my desk, where I ate it on my own, a picture of lonely desperation. One of the PAs wandered past and asked if I had BO. Yet again, coolness had escaped me and it was like being at school all over again. When I was at school I remember being in the chess club. I even won a chess tournament. Nobody told me back then that being a winner was the most surefire way there was to become a massive loser.

Then I got to the sixth form, where I and my friends realised just how tribal the common room can be. One corner had the swotty popular attractive types that everyone liked and wanted to go out with. They tended to breed among themselves. Then there was the corner with the sporty clean limbed types who went to all the parties (I never went to the parties. I wasn’t cool enough).

Then there was the corner I was in. The heavy metal corner, covered in posters torn out of Kerrang! magazine and full of the long haired and leather jacketed. I was so desperate to fit in somewhere that I and my Dungeons and Dragons playing friends sat there even though I’d sooner have gargled my own diarrhoea than listen to a Slayer album from beginning to end.

It was that or sit in the remedial corner with the kids who did a one year course after GCSEs because they were too thick to join the army. They were given the job of filling up the vending machine because it gave them something to do. One day I went up to buy a packet of Hula Hoops only to find that they’d accidentally set the price as 0p rather than 20p. I bought three and told my friends. Within 15 minutes we’d emptied the machine of Hula Hoops. Within an hour the remedial kids had filled it up again. This went on for a week before they realised their mistake.

I arrived home devastated and logged on to trumpet my misfortune to the world. And – god bless her - Natalie came to my rescue.

“You’re uber cool – that’s way better than plain old cool.” she said, “This is coming from someone who played Connect 4 tournaments at school, so I really know my stuff. I’d have invited you to join in our Connect 4 tournament. Well, I would have if I’d been brave enough.”

And then something magical happened. My friends started coming out of the woodwork. One was on the chess team and captain of the nature quiz team (whatever that was). Another owned up to being a member of the school wind band and hand washing prefect. Yet another insisted that Dungeons & Dragons is rock and roll, whatever anyone says. And one of my friends today said to me “don’t even ask me about Weather Club” (don’t worry, I won’t).

And then I realised. I’m surrounded by amazing people who, like me, have walked in the valley of the shadow of geek and have come out the other side. We don’t need the trendies with their asymmetric haircuts and skinny jeans and achingly hip record collections and perfect house parties. Fuck the lot of them. We can have our board games and old t-shirts and obscure records and endearing obsessions and bad puns and silly jokes. Why am I bothering to try and fit in with the “cool kids”? I already do.

So all that remains for me to tell you is this: Connect 4 tournament, in the library after school. Are you with me?