Hipster

     I'm not old. Or, at least, I don't think I am. Yet, when I started hearing the word "hipster" stuck on me about two years ago, I will admit to being confounded. That is until I found out what the word hipster meant.
     Somewhere in my college years, when I had little to no real access to the internet, news, and most other forms of information dissemination, I had accidentally ebayed and dressed myself into a movement. My glasses are 1970's chic, as are most of my clothes. I love old things (you might have noticed when I dedicated two posts to typewriters) and, in fact, see these vintage pieces of tech as superior to the delicate, finicky, and O so willing to be outmoded devices we have today.
     I, however, am not a hipster.
     A hipster--as I have come to learn--needs to go into this gig with an almost ludicrous amount of self-awareness. A hipster says, "Man, the 70's seemed like such a cooler time to be in, therefore I shall replicate it." Hipsters buy typewriters to be noticed--one internet blurb said it all. And hipsters do this knowing full well just how--well, I am hesitant to say--silly? or maybe just preposterous the endeavor is.
     Me? I just fell into it. I found a typewriter at a resale shop, and said, "How cool! I want another." And a collector was born. My clothes were bought for me by others--Christmas gifts, birthdays, etc--and it was them saying, "You would look so good in this." And my glasses? That is the best story of all. They were put on my face by a pregnant woman working at the clinic. "I," she said, "have only sold maybe one pair of these. You have the face for them." Reluctantly, I bought them; you don't say know to pregnant girls. That's just a rule of life.
     "So what?" you say. "You're still a hipster."
     I am not. And I will explain why next time in part two: IRONY.