I was the seventh of eight children. I always say that my older brothers and sisters raised me. Its not that my parents weren’t around, they were there too. Its just that my older brothers sisters were so much more interesting and glamorous than my parents. I would observe and note what they said and did and then report it to my friends as divine doctrine. My older brothers and sisters were gods and they could do no wrong.

In sixth grade I had a crush on Morgan McCowan. He had longish hair, he wore his pants low, and he wore Smith shirts (he had older siblings too who could tell him how to look). He was so cool. I decided the best way to show Morgan that I existed was to wear one of my brother’s Smith shirts to school. That way he would know just how cool I was.

I went to my brother’s room one night and asked him if I could borrow his Smiths shirt. He said, “wait, Jordan, do you even like the Smith’s?”. “Yeah, I like them.” “Name a song….?” I couldn’t answer him. “So let me get this straight, you want to wear a Smith’s shirt but you don’t even like the band?” He then explained to me what a poseur was and how I wasn’t allowed to do that. He gave me five cds and told me I needed to listen to everything and before I could wear the shirt I had to have a favorite song, know all the names of the band members, have a favorite album and know the names of five songs.

I listened to the band and chose my favorite song “Girlfriend in a Coma” and I wore the Smiths shirt to school the next day. Morgan came up to me and told me I had a cool shirt.