Y'Gotta Have A Hat
More than a week ago, we had been doing some outdoor jobs and because the weather was still quite mild I had brought my wide-brim gardening hat out with me.
We ran an errand, and somehow after we got back I lost track of my hat. A look-see of the back seat of the car told me only that my hat wasn't there. I went through the entire house, looking at any of the places I might have set it.
Nothing. Zilch. Zip. Nada.
No hat.
That hat was very plain and ordinary, woven natural-something it's easy to assume or presume is straw. By now it's stained with sweat and garden soil and house paint. Or, it was stained with sweat and garden soil and house paint.
How could it have disappeared?
If, on that errand, we'd foolishly forgotten to lock the car and someone was looking to steal something of monetary value, it certainly wouldn't have been that hat. That hat's of value, both monetary and pragmatic, only to me. Er...unless someone was desperate for a head covering, but you'd have to be desperate for a head covering to steal that hat.
Oh, it's still in one piece, none of its straws broken anywhere, so it's still quite serviceable, but...c'mon. Obviously it's not new and fresh.
The back seat of the car was where I last remembered seeing my hat.
And this isn't the time of year that gardening hats or sun hats or other wide-brimmed hats are generally available in the shops unless you're heading to Jamaica or Bermuda. (Or, if you're a firefighter where a protective hat is part of the gear but those aren't hats you find in the shops, anyway.)
And, as it was still solid and work-worthy, the notion of buying a new one doesn't appeal very strongly. We're used to each other, that hat and I.
Last night, something caused me to follow himself's actions by the kitchen door to the back stairwell and I noticed, on a hook high up on the door, my hat, laid over several of himself's "gimme" caps for which he has an inexplicable fondness.
Now, I am quite sure I didn't put it there.
Himself swears and vows and declares he didn't put it there.
I'm notorious for setting my hat down on its crown on some horizontal surface and dropping my gardening gloves into the space in the inverted crown, which is why I feel certain I didn't place my hat on the door hook with all the "gimme" hats.
Well, I've got my hat back again, so as soon as the frost melts off the pumpkin and the cars and everything else it has turned hoary, I can go back outside with my hat protecting me, and play.