They sound like my parents up to that point. By the time I came along, both were in their forties and weren’t all that active. They were still very progressive and occasionally let immigrants stay with us, typically one of Dad’s coworkers or relatives thereof.
When my dad was a farm kid in the 1930’s depression, one of 12 kids, he’d go visit the mexican migrant laborer neighbors and get fed there. He learned to love mexican food and picked up some some spanish swear words like coño, & carajo. From that, he learned to enjoy experiencing new cultures and food. He was considered a screw-up kid in his own culture and family. So he distanced himself from his biological family to embrace a wider, more logical family of like minded folks.
I try to be as good a man as he was.
Oh, yeah: my parents loved animals and didn’t really mind us bringing any home. Unless they were mice. Being on the outskirts of a small town, we had the occasional dog wander onto our property until we could find the owner.
At some point before I was born, there was an entire Mexican family living in our basement for about a month. Dunno why.
My dad was growing pot in the 70’s when I was in Jr. High, High-School. We would have High-School Drama Club parties at our house and dad would pass the pipe. Whether that would be considered “cool” or criminal? Well, YMMV.
My dad was gifted a piglet for some reason or another, and it lived in the backyard with our dog for a few weeks, before he found it a farm home. He used to walk it on the suburban streets of Livonia, MI on a leash.
Back in the 70’s my dad expressed a desire to try pot. My mom did NOT endorse that idea. I never did share my college stash with him, a fact that I now lament.
The family dog brought home a baby possum once. One of our cats had recently given birth and treated the baby possum as one of her kittens then he was relocated to a shelter in the back yard when old enough. I don’t recall what happened to him.
I had similar experiences. Dad raised a pair of orphaned raccoons, Fred and Wilma. Many tales of their misadventures, too numerous to recount at the moment. He bought a pony for his first granddaughter, bought a goat to keep the pony company, raised rabbits to amuse my daughters, and let loose the county’s noisiest rooster into our rural neighborhood. He was much loved, but sometimes the same folks that loved him wanted to lynch him.
Blue-collar cool in the 80’s. Softball 2-3 nights a week ending in beers at the local tavern or pizza joint. Bowling in the winter with beer and burgers. We ate a lot of fast food and pizza. We had a core group of 4-5 families. Travel for softball all over three states, sleeping in campgrounds. Renting out cabins. Regular parties with 40-60 people.
My folks toed the line of cool. Dad was raised Mennonite (city Mennonite not Amish-like Mennonite) so basically everything he did from 16 on was cool compared to his childhood. High school dropout, Vietnam combat vet, heavy drinker. Mom had a cooler taste in music and introduced us to The Beatles, and let my brother watch Dynasty with her. They both worked by the time we were pre-teens and quickly realized we were nightowls so they always let us stay up late. My brother and I lived at home with them until we were 25, and it was like a cool roommate situation.
They have never been “cultured” - no art, no classical music, no travel, no atheism, no motorcycles, no fancy clothes or birthday parties. They may have been a little uptight but for the most part I found them to be cool.
My coolest friend parent was Jeanette’s dad. He was like a big kid. Lucky for me she was my best friend until middle school (they moved away) and her mom was my Girl Scout leader so I got to spend a lot of time with him.
They were the opposite of cool.
You know that inappropriate aunt that let you do everything that offended everyone’s sensibilities? that was my mom …everyone came to our house… she smoked and bartered pot let us have pizza for breakfast …party whenever if you needed a place to stay we had a couch as you went to school… or attempted to
So yeah mom was popular …
My mom was actor Burgess Meredith’s secretary when his roommate was Jimmy Stewart; she hung out with both of them and skated in Central Park with other male celebrities. My dad was a comedy writer and friends always said he was the funniest man they knew; I have a photo of him with Marilyn Monroe at Jackie Gleason’s birthday party. I guess that’s kinda cool. 
My parents were like Kitty and Red on “That 70’s Show” only my Mom was Red and my dad was kitty.
My dad was a repressed Baptist raised in depression era Oklahoma. He did Air Force ROTC and was a career navigator on a Super Connie AEW Squad… Oh, he was also a closeted homosexual until he and mom divorced after 26 years of marriage. He was a very accomplished keyboard player and summer stock actor. When he came out he CAME OUT… woo hoo! Thankfully he got to be himself the last 10 years of his life.
My mom was raised in a Catholic military family, grandpa was a hard assed one star general who was a tyrant and a bigot and way to smart for his own good. My mom was very much a tom boy, she could fix anything and juggle two jobs and raising three kids. She still kicks ass and is almost 84.
They stayed together for the kids, mom knew dad was gay 1/2 way into the 26 years together but did what a good Catholic gal does, stay married. Mom was always the disciplinarian, fierce but fair. We never heard “wait till your father gets home”, she just handled the problems, while dad banged his piano and sang show tunes.
In some ways yes, but in others absolutely not.
I mean, my parents were always very keen to teach us fiscal responsibility. So any money we earned was ours to spend as we saw fit, under the thinking that if we blew all our cash and had nothing, that was our problem and they weren’t bailing us out. So if I had money I’d scraped up between mowing yards, birthday gifts, etc… I could buy whatever I felt like- being a Boy Scout, it ended up being knives and camping stuff a lot of the time, but I also bought a fair amount of video games, etc… Many of my friends’ parents were not so cool; they might work a summer job, but be forced to save the money, or only be allowed to buy certain things, etc… My parents were also willing to engage in negotiation about a lot of things that a lot of parents just dictated by parental fiat.
But the other side of the coin was that my parents were somewhat overprotective- I had tight curfews and consequences for breaking them that I often felt were unfair/unrealistic. For example, when my curfew was 11, and I couldn’t convince my friends to drive me home before 11, I’d get in trouble, regardless of whether I had any control over it. Or if I couldn’t find a phone, or if it was too loud at the concert or whatever. They also wanted to know if people’s parents were home, what their names and numbers were, etc… Kind of kept a lid on shenanigans, until I figured out that the trick was to go spend the night at a friend’s house who had more lenient parents. My parents assumed I was at their house, and they had the names, numbers, etc… and my friends’ parents would let us go out and do whatever we wanted. I never really liked sneaking around like that, but I felt like I had to, or I would have been that dork who had to be home when things just started getting interesting.
Nope. My parents were/are the epitome of square. They are slightly too old and conventional to have participated in hippydom, though both were on the right side of history: anti-Vietnam, pro civil rights etc.
It wasn’t until after college that I realized how hard they had worked to make a good life for me and my sister. So as I approach 50 I find them much cooler than I did when I was approaching 20. We also have more fun together as I approach 50 than we did as I approached 20. I’ve been very lucky.
Believe it or not, all of the coolness I display is self-generated.
My parents weren’t party people, but we always had cool stuff around. My dad was in the car repair business, so we had neat cars, and a lot of them. Granted, some were complete trash, but we had our share of muscle cars, or big trucks with fake steer horns on the front, or dune buggies and convertibles. Mom spent a LOT of time at the DMV.
He was big on technology so we had Betamax when it was new, video cameras that weighed 20lbs, without a battery or a place for the tape, just the camera, he built a cart to hold a big RV battery and tape player for it. We had laser disc and portable phones when nobody had those things. That was cool. The man bought me a motorcycle when I was 8, an 80cc Suzuki that had a headlight and 5 forward gears, and my mom didn’t kill him.
I just thought of something else my lengendarily uncool parents did.
Soon after the first black family moved into our quiet suburb in the 1960s, the blockbusters swooped in behind them and warned everyone that the longer they stayed, the more Blacks would move in and drive down the property values. My parents wouldn’t sell. My born and raised in the Ozarks mother and my sunk their life savings into the house father watched as neighbor after neighbor moved out until they were one of only two white families on at least four streets. It wasn’t a “political” statement - they simply didn’t see any reason to leave a neighborhood they were both happy in. My father drank beer with the neighborhood guys, while my mother hired their kids to do yard work. They stayed there for 20 years, until my mother died and my father sold the house and downsized.
Can I join the Uncool Parents club?
Back when every kid wanted to look like the Beatles, my ex-military dad would call my friends’ dads and volunteer to give their sons crewcuts in our basement as long as they were over playing with me.
And my mom said that blue jeans were what was worn by (minority) prisoners. So I had to wear itchy church pants (and button-down shirts and polished orthopedic shoes) to school, while all my friends had The Who and Stones t-shirts, and ripped jeans.
They don’t want us here. The cool parents kids never want to hang around with us uncool parents kids.