Balancing a tea cup on an onion

February 6th, 2008

Back when I was a freckle-faced scamp, and winter’s winds whipped the snow into a frenzy, Mom would make sure I never went outside without a hat on my head. I didn’t really need one, I argued, because Dad used to cut our hair with a steak knife and a bit always fell over my ears; but Mom wouldn’t listen. She was our wind chill warning before the world had ever heard of such a thing. I didn’t want to wear a hat then—and I still don’t. Some people just don’t have the head for a hat, unless they start making them out of hollowed-out pumpkins.

Hats have been around for a very long time, and it is impossible to say when the first small animal was pulled over a head as protection against the elements. I can just picture a mother tugging a rabbit over little Og’s head as he left his cave, trying to escape his neanderthal dad and another haircut with those savage stone hand tools. One of the first hats to be depicted in artwork was found in an Egyptian tomb, and shows a man wearing a straw hat. It is a coolie-style hat, a lot like a lampshade, common in places where people want to avoid the sun. Since its invention, the hat has come and gone as status symbol and fashion statement.

Today, the most popular hat in western culture, as well as Japan, is the baseball cap. Experts estimate the average North American owns more baseball caps than clean underwear. In fact, if you were to place all the ball caps in Canada in a straight line, you would be working for the government. In 1860, a team known as the Brooklyn Excelsiors wore the ancestor of the modern, rounded-top baseball cap. The style was functional and fashionable, and surged in popularity. In the 1940s, latex rubber was used to stiffen the inside of the hat, and the modern baseball cap was born. Still, there are those of us who can not comfortably wear a ball cap.

I know a good natured and rotund fellow named Red, whose head is useless for hat wearing. You could slip a large bowl over his melon, and not find a gap wide enough to wedge a playing card in. He doesn’t even leave his house around Hallowe’en, in fear that all the kids are carving him hat-o-lanterns. Putting a hat on Red’s head is like trying to balance a tea cup on an onion. A person could easily feel sorry for Red, but he made out okay. He met a girl on the internet, married her, and now spends his days in love, hand-in-hand, looking for that perfect pumpkin to hollow out for special occasions. Just about the only hat we the cranially-challenged can get away with wearing is the tuque, generally considered Canada's national winter hat, like the fur hat in Russia.

Countless Canadians have worn a tuque for protection from the cold, but it hasn’t really caught on as a fashion statement with the rich and powerful. The most famous tuque wearers, all leaders in their fields, include marine scientist Jacques Cousteau, movie stars Bob and Doug McKenzie, and Mike Nesmith of the Monkees. U2 guitarist The Edge is also a tuque fan, but he’s no Mike Nesmith. Monkee business aside, I’m glad I have a tuque to wear when I leave my cave. It still beats one of Dad’s haircuts.