Hoods, Hats, and Not Hats

 

      It's cold now.  The wind chill is below zero.  As I made my long trek to work today, I noticed hoods, hats, and not hats.

 

      I wear a coat with an integrated hood.  I find it to be much warmer than a hat.  When it's really cold, I pull the drawstrings on my hood tight so I look through a little hole about the size of a big orange.  I can stay warm for quite a while.

 

      I saw one hood today that came around the back of this guys head and then projected out like a tube in front of his face.  And to top it off the opening was surrounded by some kind of brown fur.  I actually saw quite a few fur ringed hoods.  They look especially good on girls with pretty faces.  (Sorry, I'm such a man.)

 

      And then there are hats.  If you have ever seen a movie or documentary about the early 20th century, you have seen hats.  It was a time when almost everybody wore a hat, even early TV reporters in the studio.  You could tell a lot about someone by the hat they wore.  Today, I saw hats.

 

      This one couple passed me and I could hear them speaking some Scandinavian language.  They were wearing those dorky knit caps with snowflake patterns and the long braided strings on each side like Dorothy's pigtails on the Wizard of Oz.  I couldn't help but smile.  There were lots of goofy knit hats of all colors and shapes, although I did not see any of those knit hats that cover your face with just eye holes.  My wonderful ex-mother-in-law knitted me a hat years ago.  She called it a "tuke."  It is blue and grey and has a tassley ball on top.  I wore it for years and I still have it, but I don't wear it often because I love my hood.

 

      There was this guy wearing his Scottish driving hat backwards.  One lady was wearing a hat with fake flowers over a stocking cap.  A policeman had a pair of earmuffs over his cop hat.  But today's winner was this guy who had on this black hat that was the shape of a baseball cap with the bill turned up and slightly too long ear flaps with strings hanging off of them.  The outer surface was smooth fabric, but the entire hat was lined with very fluffy black material that reminded me of a black poodle.  But the really funny part was that he was loping along the train platform with this totally dopey grin.  His gait was like that of a poodle at a dog show so the ear flaps moved up and down just like the dogs ears would.  I laughed out loud!

 

      Finally, we have our, "I don't care how cold it is, I'm not wearing a hat" bunch.  They looked really cold but they didn't need a hat.  Some had scarves and no hat.  This one guy's head was purple!  It was amazing.  I just wanted to shout, "Hello!  This is Chicago, it's freaking cold, GET A HAT!"

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