The Man with the Hat with no Name
By Francis A. Camaquin
There once was a man who had a hat. He loved his hat very much. He took it everywhere and only took it off when to a shower or go to sleep. To understand how much he loved this hat, you would have to imagine yourself without a soul. If you believe in a god or have ever believed in a god, then you most certainly believe or have believed in a soul. And without your soul, you are nothing. A void in the universe. A hole without an end. A world without a future. So was this man without his hat.
One morning, when he awoke at his usual time, he noticed his hat was not where he had placed it before going to bed. He had always made sure it would be in a place where it was safe from hat predators and shredding machine accidents, but today it was nowhere to be seen. He checked the dresser and under the black futon. He checked the closet full of shoes and broken umbrellas. He checked the kitchen cupboards packed with banana nut muffins and whole grain oat cereal. He checked the gun-rack and air-soft rifle cabinet. He checked under the salt water aquarium and inside the unused fireplace. He checked the mini refrigerator underneath the bar sink. He checked the brick barbecue pit and the tool shed. He checked the herb garden and the compost heap. Alas, his hat was no where to be found. The panic had not hit him yet, so he sat on a lawn chair in the backyard and just looked out into the grim trees and took in a few deep breaths of the cold, cold air.
His haunches hurt from walking around and about his house. What a sad look on his face! The look of a man that had lost his hat. But, this was only a momentary look. He was a very clever man, and in his head, he had been thinking up a plan to find his hat. Be the hat. Live the hat. See through the eyes of the hat that the hat doesn’t have. He had decided to check Wikipedia.org to find out more about his hat. It was a website where amazing things, facts, opinions, sometimes trustworthy, sometimes unbelievable, could be found almost instantly with the left click of a wireless mouse.
After three hours of reading about hats, the man’s eyes began to strain and tire. He thought of getting coffee, which is a grown up drink that help people wake up, either that or a bad powder that’s made from cocoa leaves, or yellow pills cram packed with an ingredient called caffeine that make you go pee-pee every hour. Coffee was the least bad of these kinds of waker uppers, but you shouldn’t drink it until you’ve reached your full height or you’ll stop growing. So the man went to his favorite coffee place, where there were plenty of strange people pretending to read, tapping on their laptops, sipping their favorite beverage, and maybe enjoying a warm piece of chocolate bundt cake.
The world was oblivious to the man’s predicament, but such is the way of the world when a grown man loses something that means a great deal to him. Even with all the information he had soaked in, the man could not figure out how to find his hat, so he had called a friend to meet him and try to help deal him with the problem. “Why don’t you just get a new hat?” she asked.
“A new hat...” he pondered. “But, I miss it so much. I don’t want any other hats,” he replied.
“Of course you miss it, but there are plenty of hats that you could be missing. You’ll never know if there’s a better hat out there for you unless you try on a few.”
“You’re stupid. I just want my hat.”
“Okay. Just think about what I said. I’ll let you figure it out for yourself,” she smiled, curtsied, and departed ever so elegantly.
“You have stupid Lisa Loeb eyebrows too!” he yelled.
Twiddling his thumbs and watching people pick up poop after their dogs, the man sat there for another hour until the sun set. When he got home, he set a bath with Mr. Bubbles and put on the angriest music he could find. This was the kind of music that made you want to punch the smaller kids in the teeth. You could boil eggs with your rage. You could snarl at a pitbull and make it whimper. Thunder would run and hide from you. Lightning would shut it eyes tight to avoid your sneer. And he played this music at full volume. It was so loud that the old white-haired people two doors down couldn’t watch their Wheel of Fortune peacefully. He didn’t like them anyway. They never offered him cake or Diet Seven-up.
The man sat in the tub and read all the labels to all the shampoos, conditioners, and body scrubs. When he had finished reading everything he could reach, he submersed his head into the water. He floated below the water line just enough to leave his lips out in the air so he could breath. This way, the water had plugged his ears, and all he could hear were his thoughts, and the advice that his friend had given him. It’s as if a layer of stubborness had peeled off his brain after each passing minute, and the man grew more and more comfortable with the idea of getting a new hat.
The next morning, after one of his most restful night’s sleep ever, the man woke up with a ginormous McDonald’s Grimace smile. All he could think about were all the new hats he was going to try on around town. He was going to try the red one, because that one was an easy fit. He wanted to try the yellow one, because that matched a lot of his shoes. He thought about trying the fedora, but he knew it was too funky. And he even thought about trying the half Korean camoflauge one, because everyone wanted that one. As he thought about all the different types of hats he was going to try, he wiggled his toes, and as he wiggled his toes, he moved his feet, and as he moved his feet, he felt something near his right foot.
Low and behold, it was his hat! In his bed! Again! Even though he had always tried to keep it away, it somehow ended up in his bed. Now if you were the man, would you let the hat stay in the bed, or would you go out and find a new hat?
But that’s another story, for another time.