( 1:06 PM )
Yankees hat
I was at Walmart last week, shopping for some of those various items that only Walmart carries. (I love a place where you can buy underwear, a car battery and a gun in the same place.) As I was perusing the menswear section, I came across a bin of baseball hats. Ever since I finally admitted to myself and publicly “came out” as a Red Sox fan, I’ve been looking for a Red Sox hat to make it official. So I started rooting around in the bin for a Red Sox hat. It was a strange mix of hats – lots of UConn Huskies, New York Rangers, New England Patriots, New York Giants, other various college basketball teams, but no baseball hats.
I try on one of the UConn Huskies hats and look in the mirror. It’s a good looking hat and fits pretty good, but way too clean and new looking, and a bit stiff. If I buy it, I’ll have to wash it a couple dozen times to get it to feel right. Maybe even run over it a couple of times with my truck.
Just as I’m about to walk away with my new Huskies hat, I do a finally root through the bottom of the bin and pull out a blue hat. It’s got that distinct and unmistakable NY Yankees logo on it. I look at it a little bit, contemplating what to do with it. It’s very soft. And a bit faded. I turn it over, looking for the price tag, but there is no tag. I look closer at it, and notice that the edges are a bit tattered, even a couple of small fibers hanging off the rim. The fabric on the top button is actually ripped a little bit.
This isn’t a Walmart hat. This is someone’s Yankees hat that got dropped in the store and someone else simply tossed it into the hat bin, thinking it was new.
I take off my new Huskies hat and try on the Yankees hat. Oh my… It fits like it was custom made for me. I look in the mirror. The rim is already perfectly curved and broken in. The subtlely tattered edges, and the faded blue coloring looks like I’ve owned it for years. It looks and feels good. Real good.
Someone, somewhere is missing this hat terribly. The amount of time and effort and patience to get a hat into this type of condition is immeasurable. I’m sure whoever lost it, spent weeks backtracking trying to find it. And when they finally gave up, they weren’t the same. It was probably like losing a friend.
I put the Huskies hat back and checked out of Walmart with the Yankees hat on my head. The checkout girl didn’t ask me about it, and no one questioned me as I walked out of the store. Afterall, it’s looks like I’ve owned it for years.
Of course, now I’m really confused about my American League East alliances.
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