Struggling to act ‘cool’ and silly as a teen with autism
Written on 31st Aug 2021 by Alex Lowery
When I was in my teens up to even my very early 20s, I had a tendency to try too hard to act cool but fail miserably at it. When I was 13 I became so aware of just how different I was from other kids. Other teenagers were silly and did daft things. I wasn’t like this at all. I tried to act like them but I could never quite get it right and I just seemed weird. I came to the realization when I was about 14/15 that pretending to be something I’m not is a terrible idea. However, despite this: I did continue to have my moments of trying too hard to be cool but not quite getting it right.
When I was maybe in my late teens, I remember seeing young people I knew that would hack into each other’s Facebook profiles and put up random statuses because they thought it was funny. The thought of doing this made me laugh so I hacked my sister’s Google+ account and wrote up something really daft. My sister told me she didn’t like it. However, I didn’t really take this seriously as I felt it was normal for young people to do this kind of fun stuff. Sometime later I did it again and my sister got really upset. However, I actually felt she was overreacting for something which was clearly just meant as a joke. I had a meltdown where I was on the floor under extreme stress. I felt like there was no reason for my sister to get so upset. I really wanted to be a cool kid but this didn’t go well.
Thinking back, maybe my sister was too young to find it humorous. When she got a bit older, she didn’t mind it so much and she even pulled those kinda pranks herself but at this point, I guess she was too young. I got stressed as I didn’t understand the issue. Now I understand I was wrong. I would say pulling pranks can be funny and it isn’t necessarily wrong but it has to be with someone that sees the humor in it. The moment you do it with someone that’s clearly uncomfortable with it, that’s when you’re crossing a line.
I also remember seeing teenage lads do stuff like remove a chair just before someone sat down. I remember trying this out with a friend I made in church. He seemed quite annoyed by it. I was just trying to be normal and act the way friends do. I still don’t really understand when it’s okay or when it’s not in this case. These days I do just accept the fact that I’m not cool but thankfully at 27, there really isn’t any pressure to be cool anymore. I don’t much like getting older. In fact, the thought that I’m not far off 30 does kind of scare me, especially with how quickly it’s flown by. However, the fact that there isn’t as much pressure to act a certain way is one of the few advantages to it in my eyes. Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed this article.
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You are cool in your own way. It made laugh about the chair.