Hats Off

I am precisely the wrong level of bald these days.

There was a time when I had a thick head of hair, the sort of hair that required thinning every time I went to a barber in order to keep it under control. That time was very long ago, however, and it isn’t coming back. I am okay with this. I may not age gracefully, but I will age openly.

We spent about two hours way up at the top of the football stadium for Lauren’s graduation a couple of weeks ago. While it was not a hot day the way it could have been it was definitely a cloudless and sunny day, and when you are that far up in a stadium there is no cover. You are just out there in the bright sunshine, eyes focused downward toward the field, head exposed to the sun.

I do not like wearing hats when it is warmer than about 50F (10C). They’re just not comfortable in those conditions. I bought a summer hat in Rome a couple of years ago because it was 101F (38C) under vibrantly clear blue skies the entire time we were there and it was impressed upon me that a hat would be bought either by me or for me and that if I wanted any say in the matter I would choose the former option. It was a fairly nice looking straw hat shaped more or less like a fedora and I probably paid more for it than I should have because I got it from a guy selling things from a cart on a Roman street during tourist season and that’s just how that works, but it served me well until I got to the Bari airport and left it in security because I’m not used to wearing hats in the summertime and as soon as I put it on the conveyor belt to go through the scanner it vanished entirely from my memory and the next time I thought about it I was in an entirely different (and rather cooler) country.

We went back to Rome the following year and I did not buy a replacement hat. It went okay anyway.

The hats I actually own here at home are either winter hats or baseball caps, the latter emblazoned with pretty much every conceivable logo except that of a baseball team, as is the American habit, though I do have a couple of those as well. They’re not really warm-weather hats, in my opinion.

All of this is to say that I spent my time way up at the top of that stadium in the bright sunshine without a hat.

The problem, of course, is that I still have too much hair to just slather my head with sunscreen the way I could do if I were balder but not nearly enough hair to protect my head from the sun the way it could in the Before times.

The results were, shall we say, predictable.

Fortunately there weren’t any lasting consequences that have made themselves apparent so far. It was slightly uncomfortable for a few days, and then there was a long period of healing which was actually more uncomfortable in some ways. I think I’m good now. I have a baseline tan on the top of my head in preparation for a summer of sun and I suppose that’s not a bad thing either.

But I may need to buy another of those straw fedoras.