I have a full pint and some time so let me tell you a story about my day.

It’s mostly about a hat.

As I covered ad nauseum last week, my son and I went away on vacation last week. Went to the lake I used to spend summers on. Stayed in a cabin my grandparents used to own.

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A lot of sentimental stuff there.

And I am one sentimental motherf*****.

The only thing I bought for myself on the trip was a hat. A baseball hat.

Bought it at the local grocery down the street from our cabin.

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But it isn’t just any grocery.

It’s a place that’s been there for 75 years.

It’s the place my grandfather used to go on weekend mornings for the newspaper and a wax paper bag of fresh donuts.

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He had a beat up old 1950s pickup truck he only drove around his property or to that one grocery.

He’d let me climb in and ride with him as a five, six, seven year old.

I loved that little ride.

So, me and this grocery have some history.

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And I bought the hat on a trip with my son. So, now you’ve got a double-whammy of potential hat sentimentality.

This hat has very strong “Favorite Hat Potential”.

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However, a baseball cap does not just get purchased and become your favorite hat.

That’s a title that must be earned. That would be a slight to all of your other hats.

Hats must be imbued with both meaning and history before they can become favorites.

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So, anyway, after a week away that I will cherish to my very grave, I dropped off my son at his other parent’s today and was feeling all kinds of sullen.

Downright melancholy.

(That’s a literary way of saying “depressed as shit”)

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So, I decided I’d take my mind off my blues by going for a walk in a nature preserve.

It’s 50 acres of mixed forest and meadow. Trails are all but untended this year. It’s basically unkempt wilderness.

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Kid you not, as I stood in the doorway prepping to leave, I looked at the two hats on hooks by the door and weighed whether to wear the new one or another I don’t particularly love.

Alas, my melancholy chose for me. The new hat it would be.

(Foreshadowing alert!)

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So I head off and march all about through savanna, scrub and forest.

But now I’m sweating pretty good, you see, and I’ve got on this new hat with strong Favorite Hat Potential and I don’t want to get it all sweaty and stained up.

So I took it off and hooked it to my belt.

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Wise Mind said “That’s not a great idea. You should just wear it.”

But Melancholy Mind said “Can’t you see I’m in my feelings here? I don’t want to get it sweaty because it isn’t just a hat it’s about EVERYTHING EVER ABOUT EVERYTHING.”

And so on the belt it went.

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And then I got sorta lost and had to cut across a big waist-high field that turned into a bog that then turned into woods that then turned into a chest-high thicket before opening up again.

And that’s when I reached down the hat was gone.

Fell or pulled off my belt.

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I straight up almost cried.

So, I’m like “Damnit. I am not going to lose that hat. I am going to find it.”

This is the first stage of grief.

Denial.

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I figured I had lost the hat somewhere around here.

And so I tromped through those woods hither and yon.

I’m literally looking for a needle in a 50-acre haystack.

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And then I widened the search like I’m doing a grid search for a missing Airbus over the Indian Ocean.

The rub is that all that grassy looking stuff in the prior image is actually this:

Waist high thistle and shit. Nature is rude as a mofo.

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I tried, man. I really tried.

I tried to retrace my steps.

I tried doing some futile sector-based sweep using Google Earth.

I effing tried.

I did four miles in that marshy-grassy-foresty hellscape.

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And then I moved on to the next stage of grief: bargaining

Maybe I could call the store and have them send me another.

Maybe I could get a relative to go and get me a replacement.

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But it wouldn’t be the hat I bought on vacation. The one I tucked under my arm when I ran in for hot donuts as my son slept in the cabin.

And I would know.

And the hat would know.

We would be living a lie.

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Anyway, it was starting to get late. The long shadows weren’t helping.

I figured I’d give it one last shot and then call it a night.

And so back into the woods I tromped.

And these were woods-woods. Forest Deluxe.

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My sad inner voice said

“No use, man. This is fruitless. What are we even doing here? Accept defeat, man.

It probably got pulled off in one of those high fields with thorns.

We’ll never find it.

Let’s just go home.”

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And so, no joke - God’s honest truth - I bowed chin to chest, let out a big exhale and was like “Okay, I tried my best... Time to go home.”

And there through the trees on the forest floor...

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...was my hat.

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I seriously let out a yell of great triumph unheard since Vikings conquered whatever it is the Vikings conquered.

I’m sentimental. This hat is already sentimental.

And now it has a little history.

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Okay, Newfound Lake Shacketts hat. I see you.

If I was meant to lose ya, you’d still be in the woods.

But you willed yourself to be found - and I willed myself to find ya.

You’ve got strong Favorite Hat vibes.

I feel good about this.

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