I remember with absolute crystal clarity the day I decided to become cool because it just so happens to be the day that I almost knocked over the king of the country of Jordan which just so happened to all take place in my thirteenth year of existence and just so happened to be in of all places Knoxville Tennessee.

If you wish to send a 13-year-old boy into geek heaven, if you wish to send a nerdy 13-year-old boy who already owns his own computer in 1982 and is already online in 1982 into a nerd Vahalla from which he will never completely return the rest of his life, then you send the 13-year-old boy to a world's fair, which was exactly where I was, August 1982, Knoxville Tennessee, me and my dad and my mom and my little brother, trapped in the early 80s like a political prisoner in one of those countries on the Amnesty International Shit List, Blondie on one side of my Walkman, Billy Joel on the other, all the way to Tennessee, Friday night I crashed your party, Saturday I said I'm sorry, you may be wrong but oh I know that you may be right. Thirteen year olds don't ask the same astute pressing questions that adults do, like how in the hell did a world's fair end up taking a wrong turn on the freeway and land somehow in Knoxville Tennessee? And, given the modern age of satellite communication and global economy we live in, isn't the antiquidated notion of a world's fair simply an exercise in futility and imminent bankruptcy for the host city in question? No. Thirteen-year-olds do not ask these kinds of questions. A thirteen-year-old's vision of the future is all utopia and no dystopia. Brave New World is not an ironic statement to a thirteen-year-old. 1984 to a thirteen-year-old is simply the year the most kick-ass album of Van Halen's career was released.

Oh, the things I saw in Knoxville, Tennessee. Television screens you could touch with your finger to change channels. 25 Apple ][ computers wired together in a big glass box. An entire home hard-wired to voice recognition software. "Computer, turn up the heat. Computer, dim kitchen lights." Solar-powered public telephones. 150 bricks from the Great Wall of China. The world's largest Ferris Wheel. Robots that could build cars. A thirty-foot-high Rubik's Cube. A live theatre built right into the middle of a giant oak tree, where kabuki was being performed by an honest-to-God Japanese kabuki theatre company. I ate french onion soup for the first time in Knoxville Tennessee. I listened to New Orleans jazz for the first time in Knoxville Tennessee. I fell in love with a northern European for the first time in Knoxville Tennessee.

Me and my dad and my mom and my little brother were on our way to lunch on the other side of the fairgrounds, hot and sweaty and tired, worn out from the international cornucopia, worn out from the micro melting pot we found ourselves in. We're taking a shortcut behind the USA pavilion, around the Sunsphere, next to the manmade lake, when suddenly I'm eating a face full of black imported Italian silk, starting to fall over backwards from the force of the blow. Strong hands grip my shoulders, I look up, and I am confronted with a powerful yet gentle mustachioed Mediterranean face.

The man looks down at me and says with a genuine air of alarm and concern, "Are you alright, young man?"

I stare back up at the face and say, "...Yeah, I'm fine."

I untangle myself from the impossibly expensive looking man and his entourage of a dozen black Italian-silk-wearing friends and we continue our quest for a Chinese lunch. A few minutes later my dad looks into the air for a contemplative moment and says, "Now I know. That was King Hussein." Hussein? King? What king? What are you talking about? "That man you ran into. He's the King of Jordan." Jordan? Hussein? King? My thirteen-year-old brain, already overloaded with the unvirtual reality being thrown at me, decides instead to tuck this packet of information into a hidden corner, to be pulled out and examined at a later point in life.

We make it to the Chinese restaurant. We stop by the souveneir stand on the way out. My brother, in his ten-year-old glory, spends his money on a pair of fake Martian antennae, glittery sunsphere logos atop springy metal coils glued to a plastic skull-gripping baretta. I, the mature thirteen-year-old that I am, opt for a more subdued, more tasteful momento of the vacation--a four-inch high silver pewter belt buckle, featuring the USA Pavilion, the Sunsphere, the snappy fair logo and helvetica lettering all the way around. It made a perfect compliment to my Dungeons and Dragons magic-user belt buckle I had received for Christmas the year before. I was also a little miffed about the sun being in my eyes all week, so I purchase the equally sophisticated partner for my new belt buckle--a new baseball cap red, white and blue, polyester front, plastic mesh back, the ubiquitous sunsphere logo on my forehead like a third eye, brim so flat and so new and so untainted you could balance a hardboiled egg up there. I was not only styling...I was profiling.

It was later in the afternoon when I had The Moment. Have you ever seen the movie American Pop? It's a cartoon by Ralph Bakshi. It came out in the early 80s. It's about four generations of Italian-Americans and how the popular music of each generation influenced their lives and loves and struggles. I had seen the movie. I saw it at midnight on Showtime the previous year. Showtime in the early 80s provided an entire generation of teenage boys two equally important and profound experiences that would shape all of our lives in the years to come. One, Showtime in the early 80s gave us our first ever exposure to underground art films. American Pop, 2001, Clockwork Orange, Eraserhead, Felix the Cat, Wizards, Heavy Metal, The Tin Drum, Dr. Strangelove, all of these I saw for the first time on Showtime at midnight in the early 80s. Two, Showtime in the early 80s gave us our first ever exposure to cheesy European softcore pornography. I saw every Emanuelle movie ever made on Showtime at midnight in the early 80s. I masturbated to every Emanuelle movie ever made on Showtime at 12:07 in the early 80s. God bless midnight on Showtime in the early 80s!

We're making our way across the fairgrounds again when I spy The Dude. The Dude is the same general age as me, early teenage little shit age. He's got a headful of moppy blonde hair, designer jeans, muted red jacket and mirrored sunglasses. He's looking bored and jaded and like it's mortifying him to be seen with his dorky family. My very first thought when I see The Dude is, "That guy looks just like one of the characters from American Pop, the rock-n-roll singer who everyone was in love with." My second thought when I see The Dude is, "That guy...looks...cool." No one can tell where you're looking when you're wearing mirrored sunglasses. No one can see your eyes at all when you're wearing mirrored sunglasses. It was not the first time in my life when I acknowledged that cool people existed in the world. It was the first time in my life when I acknowledged that with a little work I, Jason Pettus, could actually look like a cool guy. It was my first moment of puberic self-sentiency, the first of hundreds of moments that would eventually haunt me throughout high school. Why, for the price of this stupid polyester baseball cap, I could've bought a pair of mirrored sunglasses and then I'd be looking like a cool guy, not like a nerdy loser idiot standing next to a ten-year-old child with springs coming out of his head.

That one single moment in Knoxville Tennessee set off a chain of events that would eventually obsess me over the next decade. I announced to my mother that from now on I would be choosing my own clothes when we went shopping and that I hope this wasn't too much of a problem for her. I threw away my Dungeons and Dragons regalia and started wearing Polo shirts. True, they were from JC Penny's, but it's the spirit of the law that counts, not the letter. I picked up fashion fetishes in that year, 1982, that have not left me to this day--baggy pants, white socks for everything, mirrored sunglasses.

I read in the paper today that the king of Jordan has just died. Cancer complications at the Mayo Clinic. The paper said that he was the most perfect of kings--a born leader who commanded respect from the rest of the world, yet had a gentle, kind touch when it came to the common man. I still own my belt buckle and on days when I'm particularly feeling like the smarmy slacker little shit I am, I still wear it. I've been told that the postmodern irony of it all makes me cool. And sometimes, late at night when I'm drunk and no one's around, I talk to my Macintosh. "Computer, draw me a bath. Computer, turn down the stereo."