Feeling Chic in a New Hat
Notes from the Prairie: I Wonder # 17
Two weeks ago, after morning worship, one woman in a group I chatted with sported a hat. I admired it.
She said she really liked hats and added, “They make life easy. I don’t have to mess with my hair. I can put a hat over it.” Several of us commented that if we wore a hat, when we took it off we would have flat-hat-hair. We’d have to start over from scratch styling our hair when we took it off.
But wearing a hat called out to me. “I might just try that,” I said. “It looks like fun.”
The conversation rolled around in my head several times in the following days. Then I stumbled across a muted-red hat I liked. It had a bargain price. I bought it.
Sunday morning I dug around in my closet, finding a blouse that almost matched the hat and a coordinating choker necklace. I donned the hat, liked what I saw in the mirror, and headed to worship.
I felt jaunty and stylish. I decided to wear a hat more often. Might my new self-image be just an illusion? Worse yet, a delusion? I didn’t matter. I liked wearing a hat.
. . .
Monday morning, I stop at a local thrift store, try on some hats, and find another hat I like that fits perfectly. It, too, is a bargain. I buy it, decline a bag, and perch it at a cute angle atop my head.
I make a pharmacy stop where there is a a waiting line. I ask a well-dressed man seated on a nearby bench if he’s also in the line. He says no, he’s waiting for his wife. I compliment his patience. We make a bit more small talk and then fall silent. As the line moves, I catch him glancing my way a couple of times.
It’s the hat, I think. He likes the sophistication and novelty of my new hat. It was quite sophisticated—a gray wool cap with a tiny brim, perched perfectly atop my head, sporting a matching felt flower.
After a few more glances, he leans ahead, hesitates, and then begins to speak.
He’s going to admire my hat! I think.
He says, “You might like to know. . .um. . .in back of your hat there is a, um, a. . . .” He hesitates again.
I reach behind my hat. I beat him to the word. “A tag!” My new-to-me hat sports a cotton string and dangling tag. It announces loudly in thick, black ink the hat’s bargain price: $2.00.
I grab my hat. I snap off the tag. I remember Hee Haw’s Minnie Pearl and her ever-present dangling tag.
Sarah Cannon, who played Minnie Pearl, once observed, “The price tag on my hat seems to be symbolic of all human frailty. There's old Minnie Pearl standing on stage in her best dress, telling everyone how proud she is to be there, and she's forgotten to take the $1.98 price tag off her hat.”
I smash my hat back atop my already-flat hair and pocket the tag.
My jaunty self-image shatters on the store floor. Like Minnie Pearl, I have become a symbol of human frailty.
But this is no comedy act on a stage.
I have just announced my country bumpkin status and my cheapskate purchase to the distinguished-looking man on that bench and to the entire pharmacy waiting line.
For real.
Do you know someone who needs a laugh today? Share this column with them. Free subscribers welcome. ( You and your friend might want to consider wearing a hat—without the tag.)
Carol Van Klompenburg is a writer living in Pella, Iowa. She has a BA in English and an MA in Theater Arts, and she is available for reading performances of her work. Her email address is carolvk13@gmail.com.
Her latest book, A World in a Grain of Sand: Lively Little Stories of Household Stuff, is available in Pella from Carol or from Pella’s Curiosity Shop. It can also be ordered from Amazon. Readers are calling it “stirring,” “winsome,” and “delightful.”
I too liked the story. In the moment you might have thought it exhibited human frailty; however I saw courage and boldness. I admired your willingness to follow a whim and wear a hat because it made you feel good.
So often I see a style of clothing on someone and I sense that I too would like to wear what something similar. Because it doesn’t align with what I perceive are current norms or style standards I don’t give in to my inner nudging to be bold enough to step out of my comfortable routine.
Not to be overlooked; you are brave enough to write stories about your own life experiences including ones that show you aren’t perfect. That is encouraging to me to raise my own sense of self worth!
I love the story. What a kind man to alert you to the fact that you forgot to remove the tag. Others would have just kept still to gossip about you over coffee.