This February I lost my favorite winter hat on the F train. I put it on my lap at Carroll Street and forgot about by the time I got to 23rd. Greeted by the arctic conditions of 6th Avenue, I found nothing but Trident wrappers in my pocket. The horrible, freezing cold truth exploded in my brain. I had lost not only the warmest winter hat I’d ever had but it was also the only hat of mine that had ever acquired sentimental value. Val, my latest relationship catastrophe, used to steal it from me at bars and wear it home and then to bed. Making out, I would pull it down over her eyes and kiss her all over her face. We both enjoyed this little game immensely and I would smell her Monday and Tuesday whenever I put on the hat. By Wednesday she wore off. Weeks after we fell apart, a dirty blond remainder would caress my face now and then that had wormed its way into the fabric but now wanted to escape.
Two weeks after losing my hat, it came back into my life, or at least my subway car. I spotted it perched atop a Chinese gentleman on the F. Not a hat like mine. My hat. I am sure of it like Jesus freaks are sure of Jesus. I have never seen anyone else wearing a Mountain Hardwear Dome Perignon hat. Ever. Logically, surely someone in Brooklyn owns a Mountain Hardwear Dome Perignon hat, but it is an unlikelihood approaching impossibility that I would lose mine and then one of the exact same color and model would appear some 14 days later on the very subway line I lost mine. I took two photos on the sly to document the occasion for historians.
Ninja photo!
Ninja photo 2!
Five days later, I saw this same gentleman, again with my hat, coming out of Vinny’s pizza on Court Street. I didn’t have the heart or gall or what have you to strike up a conversation about the hat. I don’t even want the hat back. It just feels strange that some guy has my favoritest hat of all time and I can’t remark on it in any way. I wish it were socially acceptable to say, “Hey, I used to own that hat! No, that exact hat! You found it on the F train, right?” but I guess wouldn’t want some guy coming into my living room and saying, “Hey! I threw out that coffee table last fall! Yeah, the one you tell everyone you bought from Ikea but actually found on Smith Street and just 409′ed a lot!”
At the end of the day, however, I am glad that a nice human is getting use from my old hat. I just hope his girlfriend isn’t finding blonde hairs on his pillow.
If you see him again, you HAVE to say something. Not just for you, but for the world. Tell him to keep it if you like, but you need to have confirmation, and so do we. Then you must take a picture of the two of you, strangers brought together by a common headpiece, and then he must tell you a secret. This is NOT a joke!