According to the Urban Dictionary the term 'I lost my hat' is used "as a general response, when a person is astounded or baffled at something, be it a person's idiocy or unwarranted self-praise. The term can also be used as a response to another person's completely lackluster news."
In literature, according to Yahoo! Answers, "to 'lose your hat' means to momentarily lose your head, like having a blond moment or going way over the top over a subject".
Here, what I mean by 'I lost my hat' is that I had my hat when I set out for work this morning, and now I no longer have it. I don't know where it is, although I'm pretty sure it's sitting on the train in the general vicinity of where I had been sitting before disembarking sans hat. It is lost. I lost it. Hence the phrase 'I lost my hat'.
With that out of the way, let me tell you about this hat.
I bought it a few months ago at Sears on deep, deep clearance. I think I paid $1.99 for it. Its original price was around $20.00. If it had been some other item and as big a bargain, its purchase might have filled me with great joy. But given that it was a fairly average-looking hat, it was one of those bargains where you say to yourself, "well, it's only $1.99 so I might as well buy it".
In fact, I bought two hats that day and I immediately put the other one to use. That hat is still in my possession and I must say it's barely functional as a hat. If I try to wear it down over my ears, it gradually slips up my head and forms a very unattractive little lump above my skull. When I fold up the bottom inch of the hat so that there's more of a grip on my head, it doesn't cover my ears. But I digress, because that's the other hat I bought that day.
This hat, of the two I bought for $1.99, played second fiddle and until yesterday sat in my closet with it's red-tag still attached. Why hadn't it become a first-stringer when the other hat turned out to be dysfunctional? Because I assumed, having been bought the same day and at the same place, that this hat would also suffer from the lumpy-skull-or-exposed-ears challenge. So despite having paid $3.98 for two new hats, I returned to my tried-and-true "Canada" hat that always makes me feel a little stupid since, living in Canada and wearing it primarily in Canada, it's little message ("Canada") seems pointless. It hadn't seemed pointless when I bought it just before a winter trip to Switzerland, but again I digress.
Yesterday, I had an appointment to get the snow tires off my car. The garage is about a 25 minute walk from the train station. It was a cold morning and I knew I'd need a hat. But the night before, I had put my regular tires into the car and in doing so I had been forced to put my rear seats in the folded-over position. Unbeknownst to me at the time I lowered the seats, my faithful but stupid "Canada" hat had become trapped in the seat and obscured from view.
So I found myself in the car - poised to drop it off at the garage and walk 25 minutes to the train on a blustery morning - without a hat. Mistakenly cursing my wife for having jumped the gun on putting away our winter wear (which, to be fair to me, she does every year), I ran back into the house to grab a hat. I looked at the other, dysfunctional hat and thought to myself: "No. Not this time." And in that moment, the third-string hat got its chance to shine. But just in case, I also grabbed my Toronto Marathon insulating headband because if the third-stringer turned out to be dysfunctional, my ears would pay the price.
The delay that resulted from having to go back into the house meant I had to make the 25 minute walk from the garage to the train in about 20 minutes (yes, it did take me 5 minutes to resolve my hat dilemma). This turned the walk into an alternating walk-and-jog. Wearing my Toronto Marathon insulating headband and my third-string hat in a walk-and-jog situation made me sweaty in the region of my head. So after I had made it to the train with moments to spare, I was forced to use the hat as a sweat towel. Imagine, after months of sitting in the closet, wondering if it would ever get into the game, this hat had warmed me and then wiped me.
And in case you were wondering, yes, it had stayed over my ears. Whether that was because it was a good hat or because it was worn over an insulating headband I will never know.
Today, the forecast called for a chilly morning again. I would need a hat. Last night, I had discovered the whereabouts of my stupid "Canada" hat when I put the newly removed snow tires back on the shelf in my garage and returned my seats to their upright position. (And yes, I did apologize to my wife for mistakenly cursing her even though she hadn't known about the curse.) But now I felt my $1.99 hat had earned the right to be worn again (despite the lingering dried perspiration it likely still held) so I chose it over stupid "Canada" - a fateful decision as it would turn out.
I wore the hat today for about 5 minutes as I walked from the parked car to the train. And then I left it on the train. It didn't deserve that.
Was about 25 minutes worth of wear worth $1.99? I don't know. My hope is that someone else will find the hat, overlook the stale smell of perspiration, and take it home. More likely, someone later today will deliver it to the train station's lost-and-found. There, I expect it will sit for a few weeks, until it makes its way to some charitable organization to be resold or given away to someone who needs a hat. I could go to the lost-and-found to recover it - but that would feel wrong (and since it was only $1.99, it's hardly worth the 8 minute walk from my office to reclaim it.)
I hope that by having shared this story, you too have now 'lost your hat' (see definitions above) and can thus feel more intimately connected to me, your friend, who suffers ever so slightly this morning. (Not because I lost my hat, but because of the Jays' home opener last night.)
And I furthermore hope that those of you who habitually tell me insufferably long and pointless stories, can learn something from this one. I will leave it to you discover what that lesson is.
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