The text came in while you were traveling, heading to or away from another airport. That’s not too important. The hat was missing. Tears and hysterics came through your phone in rapid succession, catching you off guard and adding a hazy level of faraway drama to the day.
You had noticed she’d been wearing the hat more often than usual, but it was just a hat so you didn’t consider it a sign nor did you feel it necessary to place any modicum of importance on it, nothing more than would be allotted a sweatshirt or coffee mug, a fleece blanket or a blue-ink pen. These were also items she liked to wear and make use of throughout the day.
Thinking quick you sent a message to a buddy who lives in the city of the store who made and sold her the hat a couple of years ago. You allow yourself to feel a bit of pride in remembering those details and for springing into action. And then you remember that the internet is a thing and so you feel bad for asking a guy on the other side of the country to go across town to buy a hat.
She texts back within the hour that the hat’s been found. All is good. Normalcy, at least the new version of it, returns.
Coincidentally the hat maker’s own web store is having a 30% off sale a few days later so you pick out your favorite half dozen, designs you’re sure will suit her, enter your credit card details, including the 3 digit security code which feels less and less a security feature every time you send it across the internet, and press submit.
In your heart you know you’ve done a nice thing. Your head and heart were undoubtedly in the proper place but you also know this could go terribly wrong. A bevy of new hats which aren’t the hat she’s clearly been wearing more often lately could be seen as an attack, a mocking gesture, a hero complex move, an act of pity. You know it’s none of those things but what you know doesn’t matter as often these days. Things have changed.
Pingback: Fatherhood on Friday: Dads4Kesem 4Ever