A man walks into a ...

... OK, not into a bar. It's not a joke. Chris walked into the alternations shop the other day, wearing a cap because his bald head gets cold, to pick up a pair of pants he'd had hemmed.

He looked quite handsome in his cap, apparently, because Sandy, the owner, said, "You a very handsome man. You need more hats."

Chris

So, along with his pants, she handed him a large shopping bag full of a bizarre collection of hats and scarves. I know because he brought them all home. Inside the bag were such treasures as a pink and white baseball cap with an after-market elastic chin strap sewn on, a black straw hat with bright red band, a couple of straw driving caps, two fluffy burgundy hats that you'd have to be really cold to wear out in public. Picture Phyllis Diller-style hats. There were at least a dozen.

As I tried on hat after cap, I noticed that they smelled like little old lady, in a good way. A way that reminds me of my great-grandmother and maybe a little of my grandmother, from years ago. A combination of cedar chest and some floral, old-fashioned perfume or powder.

When I mentioned the happy smell, Chris said, "Oh, yeah, they said we might want to wash them before wearing them."

I yanked the weird fuzzy one off and flung it into the laundry room, where it and several others have continued to smell like little old lady for a couple of weeks. I didn't want to wash them and lose that aroma of childhood. But today I was determined to wash everything in the laundry room, dirty laundry's been breeding in there when I turn out the lights.

To my surprise, washing the washable hats and scarves (wool winter scarves, not decorative, floaty scarves) with my no-dyes, no-perfumes laundry detergent diminished the smell, but didn't completely kill it.

Now, thanks to my very handsome man, I can slip back to my childhood any time I want with a sniff of some little old lady's hats.

Comments

Morgan Mandel said…
I loved playing dressup when I was a kid. I wonder if they do that any more.

Morgan Mandel
http://morganmandel.blogspot.com
10:02 PM
Karen Kirkpatrick said…
Oh, yeah. In fact, the hats we didn't keep, most of them, we gave to my nephews. One likes driving caps, one likes baseball caps--and there were a couple of normal ones, and the oldest thought the black hat with red band could be his gangster (said with that 15-year-old accent) hat. They were thrilled!
9:32 AM
Janet Reid said…
well, he IS quite handsome! Too bad none of those hats said "Go Yankees!'
10:54 PM
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