My friend Joe, I think, had what one might call a "Gilligan hat" but which I now know is called a "bucket hat." It looked like this:
(You can buy it here!
Probably I took it from his house or his room when we were in the twelfth grade. I was a homely kid with terrible hair that I didn't know what to do with. I would grow it out, it was thick & brown & curly, until someone told me I needed to get it cut, then I went to a barber that was one step above a Supercuts, who basically just gave me a bowl cut. The hat was kind of a security blanket for me. If I could've worn it in school, I would have. I took it to college with me, & lost it (probably left it somewhere) sometime in my first year. It was for the best.
At some point, when my hair was so damn long (because, you know, no one was telling me that I had to get it cut), I dreaded washing it. When I did, it took forever to dry. When I went through a terrible break-up with a girl, I stole a baseball cap out of her car, which I had the keys to. Yes, it was very stalker-y, but at least I didn't leave a bloody clump of my hair there or something. It was this one:
(You can get this one here.
That's not exactly the cap I had - but you get it, a sportsball team cap for the Oakland Raiders. It was 1992 & the cap was made famous by hip hop folks, I think specifically someone from NWA. My ex's little brother had given it to her as a joke, because she was the opposite of gangsta.
That cap was worn all through Germany & Belgium when I was there in May 1992. Mainly because I didn't want to have to wash my hair all the time. I was probably pretty stinky - but so were the Europeans! I stopped wearing the hat when I finally cut my hair that summer. I don't know where it ended up. & for the record, I only wore it because it belonged to my ex-girlfriend. I knew nothing about the team & only knew vaguely about its hip hop connections. Of the three hats I mention here, it was the one that meant the least to me.
The last hat I have worn was what my wife tells me is called a "pageboy hat."
(& you can buy one here!)
Though I don't remember where it came from, my wife remembers that she bought it for me at the thrift store. I wore it all the time around 2004 or so. In fact, one of my fellow deejays at KOOP radio hated that hat, always telling me to get rid of it, & perhaps was ultimately responsible for its disappearance. I'm pretty sure I left it behind at some KOOP meeting or other.
One time, when I had the hat on making a presentation for a small class about the benefits of wikis, one woman asked me if I wore the hat because I was balding. I was proud to lift it up to reveal more hair than she was expecting.
Though I do wear a couple of hats when it's cold out, because otherwise my ears would freeze, I don't have a regular hat I wear any more. I don't know why. Perhaps there hasn't been another hat that has spoken to me like these three did in their day.
So if I tell you I'm wearing a hat during tomorrow's show - I'm lying. The only thing that'll be on my head will be headphones. As it should be.
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