Meet the new hat, same as the old hat.

Well, almost the same. In what is becoming an inadvertant bi-annual tradition, yesterday I went out and purchased a new hat. This is no plebian baseball cap with an amusing logo on the front, no! It is a hat of character and style, a hat with a hit crown and a handsome brim. This one is the third of its kind, and is a shade darker than the last two, a lush tobacco brown.

My hats have life-cycles similar to those of running shoes. They start out new and well-shaped; With a new hat I am a sharp lad indeed, and I can’t help but grin as I walk through downtown Boston. As the hat ages, it becomes more humble, more rough-and-ready. It’s an Indiana Jones hat; trusty, true, and comfortable, if a little dusty. by the time it decides to leave me. And leave me they do.

If I had my preferences, I’d probably still be wearing my first hat, which would be happily beat up to the point that if Sherlock Holmes saw it, he’d say that my wife no longer loved me. But, fortune has had another path for me, one more to V’s fancy. Just as my hat gets worn in, at the moment it reaches its peak of character, it dissapears. Hat #1 left me in a taqueria. Hat #2 has escaped undected, and there is a chance it’s lurking in the house somewhere. I am doubtful.

The Jungian in me aches to dive into the delicious pyschological undercurrent of my hat habit. Do I secretly fear comfort, and am unconciously misplacing my own hat on purpose, or is this a case where a hat is just a hat?