#25 - My black hat

Late last year, I had to retire my “work” hat. I had worn the hat most days for the better part of three years and the edges were beginning to fray. It’s a RealTree camo cap with my company’s logo on it; a bit outside my usual color palette (certainly when I got it), but it served me well as a means to hide my ever present hard-hat hair.

Now, while my closet used to look like a Brooks Brothers catalogue, it now only has the colors black, white, blue, and grey. This only matters because of the replacement hat I bought on Amazon recently.

I wanted something simple, something with no logo, and most importantly I didn’t wanna spend a lot for something that would inevitably get dirty. I found this guy

I’ve been wearing it for a couple of months now, and it’s interesting the feedback I’ve gotten form co-workers and family alike. One of the running jokes is that I look like someone who is up to no good. The joking is all in good fun, but it got me thinking about why people I worked and interacted with were reacting verbally to my new hat.

There was the obvious interruption of switching from the camo hat to this hat, but even after time has subsided, people still notice this nondescript baseball cap.

There was a particular thought that I found tickling, so I’d like to share it with you.

I think one of the many reasons why people react verbally to this particular piece of my wardrobe is precisely because it is so ambiguous.

It is because a plain black hat doesn’t mean anything that people need to generate some kind of meaning for it. As our mind is processing raw data, it “looks” for boxes to put things in. Given that the hat I bought is reminiscent of what a paramilitary hit squad would wear in an Episode of Burn Notice, I get why people make the connections they do.

Is there a point to this story?

Does there have to be?