He Speaks!

I’m sharing my blog space with Bruce today. Since we’ve begun to travel, and he’s only working part time, his mind has ruminated on some interesting topics.

His mind is a ruminating machine!

I’ll let you read for yourselves

The Hat Dilemma by Bruce Shaver

My wife told me to “Buy a hat!“

I’ve aged into Old Guy Bald. I don’t have a cool, perfectly shaped head, like Tay Diggs. One that can be shaved to a mirror shine and look amazing. Instead I’m spotted and scarred and what’s left of my hair is mostly white. To protect the top of my head I need an actual hat, or sunscreen. My dependability on the sunscreen thing is dicey because I’m forgetful. I see a lot of sun now that we’re outside more often, so my simplest solution is to buy a hat.

Walmart here I come!

I also shop at Walmart more than ever before. When we were setting up the RV, we had an $800 tab. $350 of that was a mattress (RV mattresses are awful). Kitchen essentials, groceries, all the various things needed for living were on that receipt!

Becoming a greeter may be in my future

Hats are funny things. I usually wear ball caps, they seem the least offensive to me. I have a couple of fedoras for special times, and my wife bought me a sun hat at Costco, but it makes me feel dumb. So ball style hats it is. But the thing about them, is that they usually have a symbol/logo that associates you with whatever group, team, organization and such, that you favor.

Being near Detroit there are all the sports team hats available, Lions, Tigers, and Red Wings (too bad Chicago took the Bears), but we just left Chicago and I’m not ready to give up my Cubs association yet. I have a Cubs hat which I would proudly wear!

But it’s in storage…

I have a Disneyland hat, but of late, they are a trigger for the alt Right, and I don’t need to trigger that crowd! I think they have enough triggers without my help.

We’re in Ann Arbor’s backyard so blue and gold are everywhere. UM is 2nd only to Notre Dame for me, as the last college team I’d ever associate with. I am married to my west coast roots when it comes to colleges. Stanford, Oregon State or maybe a Cal State school (maybe) would work, but those hats are rare in Michigan.

Every political group, school, organization, religious institution has some kind of hat. Name the group and they have a hat. This got me thinking about which group I wanted to associate with.

I pondered…

During the summer of George Floyd my kids gave me a Toledo Mud Hens hat. It’s mostly red and a little bit of blue. When I wore it around the city of Chicago I had some funny looks from people. Maybe it was simply because no one knew who the Mud Hens were? But eventually someone brought to my attention that being a mostly red hat it probably was seen, at least initially, as a MAGA hat.

I was not, and am not, a MAGA guy

In our church that summer there were a number of young adults who were deeply grieving over George Floyd and the entire issue of police brutality. Chicago was hard hit by the multiple, unjust deaths, at the hands of law enforcement and vigilantism. The last thing I wanted to do was put up a barrier that would give these young people any kind of reason to question my heart. I grieved with them, they were far more important to me than any hat.

Back to my original dilemma…

I never found a hat at Walmart. I’m still mulling over what group I want to associate with. It’s becoming a Herculean effort, though I won’t give up. At some point I’ll land on the perfect logo/symbol to wear as we travel the country. Something that won’t offend others and will still be worthy of my ‘old guy bald’ head.

My wife is searching Amazon

(Disclaimer…Bruce asked me to edit his post and some of what its written my carry my voice. Please excuse, but he did ask)