Saturday, February 12, 2022

Old men like my hats

 






Most days working at the library I wear a hat. Nearly always it is some kind of stocking cap of cotton, linen, or, least often, wool, that is long enough to cover my entire head if I wanted to, and so, since I don't, it has a lot of floppy extra fabric left at the top, flopping around.

It's a little hard to picture and can look quite different at different times. I don't know what it looks like now even though my head is extremely close to me. Indeed it's right on my neck as we speak!

Old men like my hats.

One peculiar regular who likes to tell me inscrutable stories having to do with Viet Nam and the CIA has lately taken to greeting me in French, loudly, and extolling my chapeau. I don't understand half the French of it, but I do get the chapeau part, and the general air of excitement.

Of course, a more simple "Nice hat." is the most common kind of comment I get, and it's nearly as enjoyable. It comes exclusively from men 65 and older. 

I get compliments on my wedding rings frequently as well, a gold band surrounded by silver Celtic ones. Those compliments aren't age or gender specific. My t-shirts probably come in third for the number of compliments I get. Those skew younger, though it tends to depend upon the shirt. For instance, no seven-year-old has ever complimented my "Albert Camus: The Plague" t-shirt, but they regularly do for my "Totoro in all seasons" t-shirt.

There are many other stray compliments I have received over the years, but I shan't list them here as I wouldn't want you to think I put too much store of them.


Nevertheless, I have every last one of them memorized.








1 comment:

  1. Hey, I want to see the hat! You need to post a selfie! [I don't for a moment think you would do this, but what the heck, I had to ask.]

    ReplyDelete

If you were wondering, yes, you should comment. Not only does it remind me that I must write in intelligible English because someone is actually reading what I write, but it is also a pleasure for me since I am interested in anything you have to say.

I respond to pretty much every comment. It's like a free personalized blog post!

One last detail: If you are commenting on a post more than two weeks old I have to go in and approve it. It's sort of a spam protection device. Also, rarely, a comment will go to spam on its own. Give either of those a day or two and your comment will show up on the blog.