My Hat

I’m not typically a hat wearer, a cap donner, a chapeau aficionado, or even a hoodie flipper, but recently while perusing through a fine men’s wear haberdashery in a small mountain village of Bavarian persuasion smothered in Christmas sauce, I spotted a hand-made… Wait! Not just a hand made, but a "Responsibly grown, (and) beautifully made" hat (according to the sewn in label). A genuine member of the “Conner hand-made hats” family! And as fate would have it, it was an extra-large… just like my head!

To sweeten the deal even further, it was a dusty faded shade of pine green, pre-scuffed and pre-worn in all the right places; not quite a fedora and not quite an Aussie outback hat. It was… it was the perfect hat. And by perfect I mean it was the first hat to ever speak to me, and it said, and I quote, “Hey dude, I’m your hat”.

“I don’t need a hat,” I said back to the hat, and I set it down and continued walking through the haberdash… Ha! Who am I kidding? I continued walking through the overpriced Leavenworth gift shop.

Then I heard my wife say, “Do you like that one?”

“What?” I said. “Yeah, I guess, but I don’t need a hat,” I continued.

“You should get it,” she shot back.

I reluctantly returned to the hat. It sat there looking a little smug for my taste, but I picked it up and dropped it back on my head. It fit perfectly… “Slytherin!” it hissed. I flinched and the hat laughed, “just kidding,” it said. “I see you've read the books…”

“Yeah I read the…”

“I think you should get it,” my wife said, unknowingly interrupting my conversation with the hat.

I looked at the price tag and set the hat back down for the second time. “I can’t afford it,” I said.

She picked it up and checked the tag. “It’s $49.00. You can afford $49.00,” she informed me.

“That’s a lot for a hat!” I protested. But being as well-versed about hat prices as I am about the going rate of mangos in Dubai I was apparently unconvincing.

“Get the hat,” she said.

“Do you want this in a bag, or will you be wearing it?” the cashier asked.

"I'll wear it," I said, and I still wear it… Because after all, it’s the perfect hat.