Hat trick

I still have to tell you the story of the hat. I'm sure I'm supposed to have some sort of musing on the passing of the years and how you're only as old as you feel and how children keep you young and how I feel like I look pretty damn old suddenly, since turning 36 or so, but I'll skip that and tell you about the hat instead, because it's more entertaining.

I had a hat. I got it at REI last summer, and it was great. Nice to look at (though I have to admit that the last time I looked at myself in a mirror while wearing it was probably the day I bought it; but I put a good ten-minutes consideration into it at the time), shade-providing, and eminently squishable - or "packable", as I believe they like to say in Marketing.

Then suddenly, last Friday, I didn't have a hat any more. Coincidentally, neither did Mabel. Mabel's hat and mine were both missing. AWOL. Not on the sideboard or in the car or even folded up inside the stroller. I wondered if we could possibly have left them at the pool the Wednesday before. So on Friday afternoon we went to the pool and asked to see the lost property. Two tubs of assorted damp and mildewy discarded underwear and swimsuits were presented to us, and, miraculously, there was Mabel's lovely new pink hat. Only slightly damp and not yet mildewed. The lifeguard was agog to see something leaving the box: he said before things had only ever gone into the box.

It was sad that my hat wasn't there, and we spent the rest of the afternoon eyeing anyone in headgear with suspicion in case it would turn out they had stolen my hat. But Mabel's was newer, so I was glad to have hers back at least. I thought it was silly that I had lost both hats at once, but that seemed more likely than the notion that I might have lost two hats in different places on the same day.

On Sunday morning I went straight to REI, hoping that the hats would be on sale. They weren't. I bought the same hat again, for $38, because I had to, really. I can't be without one, and it was a good hat. It wasn't its fault that some bint had stolen it from the poolside.

Tra la laa, I had a new hat.

You can probably see where this is going.

On Wednesday we arrived at the playground for the regular Wednesday playgroup thingy. In the middle of the picnic table was a hat. I looked at it. I asked the woman sitting in front of it if it was hers. She said it was not. They commented that they had thought it might be mine, but I was wearing mine, so it clearly wasn't.

"That's my hat!"

My hat had been sitting on the picnic table in the playground for a week. There had been at least one torrential downpour in that time, not to mention all the people who would have passed by. And the summer camp kids who lunch there every weekday. It was unscathed and appeared untouched, though perhaps a little wobblier around the edges than usual.

I brought the new one back to REI this morning and the nice people gave me my money back. It's like my birthday all over again.