#11 / Your friends are your super-powers
But we’ll get to that after I talk about my new hat, which is also a super-power. Mostly
I think I might have mentioned that I’ve never been able to wear a hat except under extreme conditions, such as deep winter and cycling, and even then it’s always an ordeal and by the time we get out the door, Daisy’s impatience is showing. I don’t know how she learned to glare like that.
Due to my optimistic nature and bouts of tenacity, I have an abundance of hats, each of them perfectly suitable when viewed from a certain angle, but none of them appropriate for the 3D world. And because I’m a sucker for the old adage money buys happiness, I have paid embarrassingly high prices for some of them, only to discover, immediately upon removing the tags, that they look ridiculous. And by they, I mean me.
Most of the time, I pretend the hats I buy are gifts, and I offer very unsolicited explanations to the girl behind the register so she doesn’t think me a fool
“It’s not for me,” I tell her, and then I spill into a lie about my make-believe life and my make-believe friend Katherine, Kate or Katie, depending upon the spirit of the hat.
“She’s very picky” I add for the sole purpose of softening the blow of my eventual return trip.
Under ideal circumstances, such as dark corners, I’ll try a hat on while shopping, but mostly I don’t. I envy to the point of greenness those women who can just go ahead and try on all the hats they want right in the mirrors provided for such activities. I simply can’t face a public mirror so I try to force myself into the change room, a decoy blouse or two slung over my arm and a what hats? kind of attitude.
I have similar issues regarding bicycle helmets. Do you recall The Great Gazoo, because if you don’t, one look at me in my helmet will twig your memory
I just googled The Great Gazoo to make sure I didn’t make him up, and there he was. You’ll never guess who did the voice-over. Harvey Korman, that’s who! I have told practically everyone this fascinating fact and nobody, thus far, knows who I mean.
When your comic heroes, or any hero I suppose, is too old for most people to know, it’s time you started getting out more.
My new hat is a baseball cap. It is red. It gives me colour. It makes me spry. I got the swing of it immediately and happily forked over the $28 and declined the receipt. Final sale, baby.
However, it has turned on me, as hats are wont to do. (Try typing that word without autocorrect sticking in an apostrophe. Daisy came running to see what the ruckus was all about.)
I bumped my head six times yesterday. Four on the goddamn bird feeder which has many corners, and twice on the goddamn trellacy thing, and I blamed it on obstructed vision due to my hat. The latest blow was enough for me to remove my hat and toss it across the yard.
Is hat-tossing a sport? Because if it is, sign me up. I am a natural.
My sister came over yesterday and although she wasn’t sporting a hat, she also bumped her head – on both obstacles and in rapid succession – once on the goddamn bird feeder and once on the goddamn trellacy thing. She then said it seemed like a set-up.
I had to agree with her, between gasps.
More backyard perils:
gopher holes
the skunk
clotheslines
possible hammock-decay
swearing
assorted dog poo
assorted tools including the goddamn rake
weeds
falling apples
last fall’s apples which are easily confused with #6
Thanks for reading!
Oh. We never got to the your friends are your super-powers part, but it’s an interesting way to see them, and also a cool way to see yourself. When I see myself as somebody’s super-power, I can wear any hat in the world.
