I took something away completely different from this song that the previous posters. Particularly the lines "Well there's lots of smart ideas / In books I never read / When the girls come talk to me / I wish to hell I had" and "Back when I was younger / I was someone you'd have liked" are bittersweet. This entire song is filled with regret. He should have been more studious so he'd have something interesting to say when people who look up to him talk to him.
He's grown older and see all these bands coming up with crazy hair and neon clothes and says to himself, "If this is what is cool nowadays, then I am not cool." When you get older, the need to be cool gets less and less important. But it's possible he looks at his younger fans who feel kinship towards him and he think if he was closer to their age, they would feel intimate towards him, not just some kind of big bro relationship.
I feel that Jim thinks that he's a dork. There's nothing wrong with that. And he's happy with where he's at in life. I think the main meaning behind this song is that you don't grow older, you grow better.
I took something away completely different from this song that the previous posters. Particularly the lines "Well there's lots of smart ideas / In books I never read / When the girls come talk to me / I wish to hell I had" and "Back when I was younger / I was someone you'd have liked" are bittersweet. This entire song is filled with regret. He should have been more studious so he'd have something interesting to say when people who look up to him talk to him.
He's grown older and see all these bands coming up with crazy hair and neon clothes and says to himself, "If this is what is cool nowadays, then I am not cool." When you get older, the need to be cool gets less and less important. But it's possible he looks at his younger fans who feel kinship towards him and he think if he was closer to their age, they would feel intimate towards him, not just some kind of big bro relationship.
I feel that Jim thinks that he's a dork. There's nothing wrong with that. And he's happy with where he's at in life. I think the main meaning behind this song is that you don't grow older, you grow better.