From: mss2@kimbark.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer)
Subject: Hats
Reply-To: mss2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 08:14:07 GMT

	"In the interest of wasting more time rather than studying for
my next exam (currently in a bit under eleven hours) I've suddenly
been struck with idle curiosity.  For no particular reason, I'm
wondering who here chooses to wear hats in these post-Kennedy years,
and what kind?  (Actually, I'm told that hat sales had been going down for a
few years before Kennedy, and that the President simply confirmed a
trend by choosing to go hatless, but he makes a convenient target of
blame anyway. :-) )  Personally, I'm primarily curious about RL, but
if your VR persona wears a particularly unusual accessory on
his/her/its head or equivalent, this may be an opportunity to remind
us all.  (I personally tend to be poor at remembering people's VR
descriptions unless I'm continually reminded of them or they're
implicit in the name.)

	"As for myself, both in VR and RL I usually wear a black
fedora which I picked up earlier this year.  (Actually, I started
wearing it in VR before I found a hat I liked in reality.)  I also
have a grey fedora which I got about a month and a half ago, which I
wear occasionally, but I still prefer the black one for the most part,
particularly with the black trenchcoat I've been wearing since the
weather turned cold.  Although by now the black hat really could use a
cleaning and blocking, but unfortunately, I haven't found any place in
the vicinity of Ann Arbor with the facilities-- something else I can
blame Kennedy for.  :-)

	"I'm not entirely sure why I decided to start wearing it.
Part of it was mutual encouragement between myself and a friend in
Chicago.  We would talk about the fact that it was a shame that hats
had gone out of fashion occasionally, and finally he took the
initiative and decided that there was no good reason why he should let
that stop him.  After seeing him wear it a couple of times I agreed,
and got one of my own.  Ironically, I bought it when he and I went on
a car trip together, and that same trip he put his own hat on the
floor, forgot, and mashed it into something only vaguely resembling
its former self.  Since he hasn't gotten it blocked (similar
difficulty in finding a convenient place to do it) he's been bareheaded
since July, after inciting me to buck the trend.  :-)

	"But there were other reasons.  I have a tendency to fade into
the background if I'm not careful.  My hat distinguishes me from most
other people, so that I don't look like everyone else and people have
something obvious to recall me by.  It's something I can continue to
wear if/when I get a job which won't be part of the uniform (law being
likely to stand as the last bastion of the suit and tie regardless of
how other occupations go).

	"And, of course, I _like_ it.  I like playing with anachronism
and atavism-- I tried writing with a fountain pen for a while, but
decided that with my handwriting I was adding insult to injury for
anyone who had to read it.  (There was some irony, though, being
someone who, for a while, _only_ wrote with either a fountain pen or,
more commonly, a portable computer.)  I use American Movie Classics (a
cable TV channel which broadcasts movies from the 30's, 40's, and
50's) as occasional background noise, and occasionally play a mental
game of subtracting from the room I'm in everything in it which wouldn't
have existed prior to a given date.  I write letters in iambic
pentameter with archaic verb forms, or use obsolete closings ("Yr obdt
svt", "I remain", etc.)  Choosing to wear something "old fashioned" is
fairly in character for me.

	"It was also a means by which I could defy the fear of looking
different that got burned into me in middle school-- a way of saying
I'm no _longer_ twelve years old and I don't have to worry about that
sort of thing anymore.  Fortunately, I haven't run into the sort of
nonsense that Taldin has, after all: most of the comments I've gotten
on the fedora are complimentary.  The nearest thing I've gotten to the
`Robin Hood' thing is one guy in my building who calls me `Indiana
Jones'-- but he doesn't seem to be mean-spirited about it, unlike the
jerks bothering Taldin.

	"Oh, the reason I'm not wearing the hat inside the bar is that
I figured if I'm going to revive the custom of wearing it, I might as
well go whole hog and adopt the traditional customs regarding male hat
wearers.  Unfortunately, I haven't entirely figured them out yet-- if
anyone has a good rule for it I'd be interested.  My general
impression is one isn't supposed to wear a hat indoors, but a
sufficiently large indoor space (say a domed stadium, or a hotel
lobby) doesn't count.  Elevators definitely count-- a lot of my
reading seems to suggest that wearing a hat in an elevator was a
special sin of some sort.  One takes one's hat off in the presence of
a lady-- but if one is indoors, it's supposed to already be off, and
if outdoors-- well, what if it's raining?  It gets confusing to me,
anyway.  I wonder if the complexity of the rules contributed to the
disappearance of hats.  :-)  At least Mike Callahan, unlike most of today's
benighted restaurateurs and bar owners, provides a hat rack for his
customers.

	"This is getting long-- obviously I really don't want to go
back to studying bankruptcy.  :-)  But I already know about _my_
hat(s)-- what I want is to know about other people's.  I remember
Wales wears a fedora, and I know Taldin wears a hat with a feather,
though I don't recall what kind offhand.

	"Actually, that reminds me-- one other area of my ignorance is
what names go to what hats.  I know what a fedora is, and a bowler,
but much beyond that and I'm lost.  What's a Trilby?  A slouch hat?
etc. etc.  If you have any doubts that anyone might know what you're
talking about, you might want to describe it in detail.  (Just in
case, to make sure that I don't leave someone else with no idea what
_I'm_ talking about: a fedora is easy, as it's the kind of hat 90% of
the men are wearing in old black and white movies from the 30's and
40's.  The brim is turned up at the back and down in front, and the
crown has two indentations in the front half, one on the right side
and one on the left.  It's made of relatively soft felt, though stiff
enough to hold its shape.)

	"Now I'm really finished.  So what, if anything, are the rest
of you wearing on your heads?"

Michael

-- 
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS	"Indeed I tremble for my country
mss2@midway.uchicago.edu	 when I reflect that God is just."
mike.schiffer@um.cc.umich.edu	 -- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on
mschiffer@aal.itd.umich.edu	    Virginia (1784)
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