hats

“Once I read a story about a butterfly in the subway and today, I saw one! It got on at 42nd and off at 59th, where, I assume, it was going to Bloomingdales to buy a hat that will turn out to be a mistake, as almost all hats are.”
—You’ve Got Mail

Once upon a time, a loooooong time ago, my friend Wes asked me this question: “If you were a hat, what kind of hat would you be?”

“A black beret, of course”, I responded without hesitation.
This was the mid-nineties when everybody was wearing berets. Think Monica Lewinsky.
And it was during my black dress with black tights with black Doc Martins phase so yeah, I felt confident with my decision.

As I remember it, we were walking down a pretty steep hill near Wes’ home in San Diego on our way to dinner at a little place in his neighborhood.

Or… We were walking down that same hill after parking someplace where they didn’t have meters (because we were too cheap cool to pay for parking) and I was eating an Abba Zabba.

I have memories of both those events and the hat conversation happened on one of them I just can’t remember which one.
Anyway, I digress.

Wes stopped dead in his tracks mid-hill which took me a while to notice and because I had so much momentum going. When I finally did look back—he was shouting distance away.

I know that because I heard him shouting “You are so NOT a black beret! Do you even know yourself at all?” At the back of my head.

I waited and when he caught up with me he gave one of those shoulder shoves that your brother gives you when you eat the last chocolate chip cookie or your friend gives you when you say something dim-witted like, you think you’re a black beret.

“What? I love my black beret! It’s simple and clean and it gets the job done—pretty much like me!” I said, presenting my case to his smirky little face.

He started to laugh. And not just a polite little tee hee kind of laugh. Oh, no, my friend was practically doubled over, seized with big guffaws of raucously loud laughter.

I looked around, embarrassed, but the street was empty.

“You are the most complicated person on the planet! He finally managed to choke out. “Simple? Simple? HARDLY!” Bahahahahahaha!

I just stood there with a pouty face silently watching my friend convulse with laughter. But as everybody knows laughter is contagious and within seconds I came down with a nasty case of the giggles.

He continued, Oh, my, gawd! Get’s the job done! A beret is boring! A beret says I didn’t have the time to think about this. You are NOT boring and let’s get real here—you overthink EVERYTHING!”

He locked his arm in mine as we continued down the hill powered by the laughter.

“Okay”, I acquiesced through a fit of giggles. He had a point. “Then, if you know me so well—what kind of hat am I?”

“You are a pink hat. A pink party hat with a flower. Something zippy and sassy that says let’s have fun!”

And although I would never be caught dead in such a hat, I loved the fact that my fashion-forward, highly insightful friend had picked the exact same hat for me that I imagined the butterfly on the subway had chosen for itself at Bloomingdales.

By the way, I have to disagree with Ms. Ephron, (who wrote You’ve Got Mail) hats are never a mistake, even for butterflies.

So…what kind of hat are you?

Carry on,
xox

*This pales in comparison to what I saw.

I wanted to give a shout-out to the woman wearing the largest Easter bonnet I have ever seen outside of an Easter parade. As a matter of fact, it was an Easter parade float—on her head.

I was with Sally (the hike Nazi), and we weren’t in a church where you might expect to see a giant bonnet or two.

Nope, we were shopping. Or better said, she had taken pity on me, her bent-over, cut-open friend, and had offered to drive me to the market for macaroni and cheese. You know the shitty kind they have at the service deli that doesn’t contain one single natural ingredient. I’m sure the noodles are plastic and the orange dye is toxic but I was craving it—what can I say?

The fact that this woman was wearing a ginormous bonnet loaded up with colored eggs, fuzzy yellow chicks and assorted foliage inside of  Ralph’s supermarket didn’t seem to faze her in the least.

She was bipping cheerfully across the front end of the market seemingly unaware of the fact the everyone was staring at the float on her head. You couldn’t help it. First of all, this spectacle happened last Tuesday, a full five days ahead of the Sunday holiday.

Even in my debilitated state I couldn’t help but smile. And point and stare. I’m a sucker for a funny hat.

“Sally!” I yelled feebly not wanting to use my diaphragm muscles for volume lest I pass out from pain right there in the self check-out line. “Get a load of that!” I grabbed her shoulders and pointed her entire body in the direction of the float wearing lady because that’s what good friends do—we point shit out to our besties so they don’t miss it.

Especially funny shit.

She looked up distractedly, (do you blame her? She was at the market—with an invalid—on her day off), broke a smile, nodded her approval, and went back to slamming the groceries against the glass to get them to scan. Clearly, my Good Samaritan friend had lost her patience with life, me, questionable mac-n-cheese, supermarket scanners, grapes with no code, and women who wear costumes to shop.

I, on the other hand, was totally enthralled with this woman. I was dying to take a picture with her but my phone was in my back pocket and that day I was completely incapable of the contortions that would require me to perform.

I had been marinating in post-surgical moroseness (or morosity as I like to call it), and THE PURE JOY emanating from this happy-go-lucky, completely un-selfconscious, float wearing woman was like a beam of sunlight parting the black clouds that had gathered around my head. I couldn’t help but stare. And laugh.

But not AT her—WITH her.

She was delightful.
I wanted to BE her.
I wanted to crawl up inside of her bonnet which was the size of an extra-large pizza box—suck my thumb—and see the world from that vantage point.

God! It must be great to be her!

So thank you, giant Easter bonnet wearing lady. Just the memory of you has made me smile this entire week and I can’t ask more from another human being than to make me that happy.

Can you?

Carry on,
xox