Ich Habe Keinen Hut!

The Universe has just handed, nay presented to me the opportunity to use the only German phrase I can reliably utter: I Have No Hat.

Somewhere, out in the cold, salty streets and possibly mixing with unsavory ink pens, loose change and single socks, I’ve lost my second hat in less than a month.

Two hats in under a month. How can this be?

The poor things are out there somewhere, having, perhaps, fallen off of my lap while leaving a friend’s car and then trampled into the slushy streets.

Or maybe they’re mingling with mislaid scarves and grungy lunch sacks in the lost and found box at the bus station…

I can’t bear it.

But in this economy, with hours being cut, taxes going up? As sad as it is to admit, unless I hit some awesome sale, I may have to ride out the winter season with my reserve hat…

The reserve hat. Ugh.

The reserve hat: some old, hair-crushing, knit toque with a belligerent nature and a tendency to make me stop at neighborhood bars.

I don’t know what it is about that hat… I feel very “Rocky” Balboa in it, like I should be running up flights of stairs, throwing punches in the air, or perhaps tossing boxes on a pier somewhere.

Oh, my lovely, lovely hats. They’re gone – and yet I must stagger onward.

I can’t bear to think of them, the black cashmere beret, the red crushed velvet cloche…

I know those hats. They’d want me to go on. It’s just how they were. So here’s what I’m going to do – and please join me in this charade, if you will.

Somewhere, my hats – and perhaps your hats? – are whooping it up, “hat-style”, a chapeaux-only cocktail party in a lovely Lost and Found. The clinking of glasses, the gentle laughter as someone tells that old “two-hats-walk-into-a-bar” joke yet again, a five-piece jazz ensemble playing “You Can Leave Your Hat On” in the background…

Sigh.

Good-bye, my lost hats. I hope you’re happy, wherever you are.