Hats Off

If I were a credible author of some sort, and I was Hindu, this post would be written in a deep and serious manner; it would be a metaphor for reincarnation and would express beliefs that I had about the world around me and the world not around me. As it is, I am some ex-pat with a beard and a Bible, so, in reality, this post will be composed in a shallow and whimsical manner; it will be a literal account of events that happened that really don’t mean anything important, except that: I am not very good at not losing baseball caps.

At some point earlier in my life, perhaps as early as the summer of 2003, my junior year of high school, I acquired a Minnesota Twins baseball hat. It was white; on the front was the red “M” that is a common logo for the Twinkies. On the back it said “Twins.” The hat was not fitted. Nor was it a commonly-seen hat in the Midwest, so I liked it for how distinct it was. My father did not like it as much, as his main interaction with it was taking it from me and putting it in the dish washer; “Why white, Reub? It shows sweat so easily.” He was right.


During the summer of 2004, I went on my high school’s Spanish trip to Mexico. Naturally, I brought my Twins hat with me; I knew that the sun was a dangerous threat in that country, so I brought protection for my head. The trip was a smashing success until one fatal happenstance occurred. One night, late in the trip, many of us students and some of the chaperons were playing cards at a table next to the pool at the hotel we were staying at that evening. At some point, someone aimed some insulting phrase about me, so I threw my white Minnesota Twins cap at them. However – not in Minnesota Twins fashion – the throw was way off, and the hat careened over the shoulder of the insulter into the bushes…never to be seen again.

I did not think about the hat immediately after I threw it, perhaps because a bit later Nasty Nate pushed Naked Jon into the pool – clothes and travelers checks and all; he was unfortunately not naked at that time – and enormous chaos ensued, so I was preoccupied with that and did not realize my cap was AWOL until we were ready to leave the next morning. I searched the bushes without any results, but I had no choice but to leave. It is my only hope that somewhere in Mexico, some old geezer or large child or lucky housekeeping lady is sporting that Twins hat proudly. Maybe he or she has even written a blog post about it, a twisted doppelganger to this one.

I, however, needed a new hat. Especially because I was moving to Bethel mere days after returning from the Mexico trip. So my mom and I went to Lids or some place in the Empire Mall in Sioux Falls and scored a new one. Boom. This second Twins hat was navy blue ‘round the sides and white on the front, where the famous “TC” – another commonly-employed logo of the Twins – lay. The bill was blue. The cap said “Collector’s Choice” on the back. It was a good hat.


This second cap served me well during my freshmen year at Bethel University, where I think I went only three days without a hat all year. When the school year was over, I took a position with the Rock Rapids Municipal Utilities in my hometown, along with the aforementioned Nasty Nate. This is where disaster struck.

Nasty and I were working on a landscaping project near the Rock Rapids swimming pool. We basically had to dig out all the earth that surrounded an electrical box that lay on the boulevard between a parking lot and the street (intriguing, I know). The work was hard, the summer was hot, and during one of the grueling afternoons that we slaved away out there, I removed the second Minnesota Twins cap and placed it on the ground…never to be seen again.

Again, it was not until later that I realized my head was naked and bare. Nasty and I revisited the work site, but to no avail: the hat was gone. The same feelings of grief and annoyance again rolled over me. I pondered as to whether this would be a recurring theme in my life, this inability to hang on to something so important and so vital.

I need to add a brief and tantalizing anecdote that sets this chapter of the saga apart from the others. There was a moment at which I thought Lost Cap the Second could be recovered. Nasty and I were driving in one of the big white pickup trucks that the utilities company foolishly let us drive when suddenly we passed a kid on bike. Both of us look at the boy a bit longer than one usually looks at boys on bikes – because he was wearing the same hat that I’d lost a few weeks back! We passed him, but I slammed on the breaks and threw the vehicle in reverse (not the only time I threw one of the utilities vehicles in reverse, but that is a story for another time and another place) to pursue the innocent young biker. We pulled up to him and I gruffly yelled, “Hey! Where did you get that hat?” The befuddled youth said, “Uh, my dad got it for me.” I was not satisfied with this answer, so I said, “Well, where did he get it?” The boy said, “I don’t know.” I stared at the kid a moment longer, sighed, and drove on. Nasty shook his head and said nothing. The mystery remains unsolved: did that whippersnapper have my cap? Could I blame him for not wanting to give it back? Who knows.

Obviously, I went and purchased yet another Twins cap. This one was the most normal of the three thus far; it was simply a blue hat with the red “M” on it…a very common design. Somehow, I managed to hang onto this one for almost five years, through my sophomore, junior, and senior years of college, a wild summer in Sault Ste. Marie in Michigan, an autumn in north Minneapolis, and a year between Seoul and Niagara Falls. The color faded after a while, but the hat was a winner for quite a while.

I promise that this is my butt and my hat, not some other guy's butt and some other guy's hat.


And then, of course, the bliss came to a crashing halt one night in Hongdae, where many good things come to crashing halts.

It was the first night of the Lunar New Year break, a Thursday. A crew of us – Mr. Mark Nola, J.J., Elizabeth, her friend Jennifer, and myself – assembled ourselves and shipped out to the Hongik University area to cut as many rugs as possible. How distinctly I remember! We found a place with music and space that suited our interests – NB1 – and got crazy. Really crazy. So crazy that I had to remove my flannel and sweatshirt to reveal my sweat-soaked gray t-shirt and – and – put to the side my faithful Minnesota Twins baseball hat. Such was the intensity level of the evening. The club was not very crowded, so I simply placed the flannel/sweatshirt combo under some stairs and placed my hat underneath the shirts, but…it was never to be seen again.

When we decided to leave, the flannel and the sweatshirt – thank the Lord – were still there…it was snowing when we left. But the hat was gone. Which means someone deliberately took it. I can only hope some Korean college kid is dancing somewhere with it on right now, enjoying the same disinterest from the ladies that I enjoyed while in possession of Lost Cap the Third.

Here we are; notice the lack of hat on my head:


Then there were a few dry months, but, miraculously, the good Judith Brummer happened to be heading back to the Twin Cities area from Seoul, and she benevolently purchased a hat for my lonesome skull and brought it back. This fourth hat, another blue-ish one with the “TC” on the front, was sort of like those jeans that have holes and are faded already; the style of this hat was such that it looked like it had been worn many years by someone. Consequently, it suited me perfectly, because I had worn a Twins hat for many years.


This fourth Twinkies hat lasted through the summer and through another year in Seoul before coming with me to China, to Beijing, to BWYA. Perhaps by this point in the tale, the reader can tell where the plot is heading. Yes, it’s true: a Communist guard took my Minnesota Twins cap at gunpoint when I was seized for being a democratic American reading a banned book, blogging, and proselytizing on the streets of Wangjing!

Just kidding. Here is what happened. I supervise a baseball club on Wednesday afternoons, during fifth block. Maybe a quarter of the students had baseball caps, so I made a point to yell at them to – among other things – find baseball hats to wear to club. One day, one of the aspiring young players asked if he could wear my beloved Twins cap (I think he was actually going to use it as a mitt, because he didn’t have one of those, either). I decided to let him, but first I told him to repeat after me.

“I swear,” I said.

“I swear,” he repeated.

“To take care of this hat,” I continued.

“To take care of this hat,” he said wearily.

“With. My. Life,” I finished.

“Withmylifeokay give me that I have to go play.”

We had our practice, we got back on the bus, and we drove back to school. As I sat in my classroom later, I realized that my Twins hat, the fourth one I’d had in as many two-year blocks, was still with that boy. I sighed, knowing that search though I may, I would not be able to regain the cap. I knew it was fruitless because history told me so; all my other efforts at finding my lots head coverings had been in vain. And it was so: I questioned the pipsqueak and he had some excuse about giving it to someone else to give to me. I used that excuse once, too. When I was smuggling cocaine in South America.

Here is me, playing baseball with no baseball cap! An outrage:


So. This was how I entered the 2011 Christmas season (theme for the year: "A Beard Is a Terrible Thing to Waste"): hatless. Sin sombrero. 没有帽子. 모자 없어. ניט האַץ. أي القبعات. ไม่มีหมวก. 帽子のない. કોઈ ટોપીઓ. However, I did not see the E8B homeroom Christmas party coming.

There we were. The lights were a-flashing, the music was a-blasting, the balloons were a-flying, the cookies were a-plenty, and there were Secret Santa gifts being flung to the left and to the right. Suddenly a present was being thrust into my hands. In spite of all my Grandma Schoon had taught me, I violently freed the gift from its prison of wrapping paper and beheld what I'd received in my shaking hands:


What a champ! If I'd have been a Taiwanese eight grade student who'd drawn his bearded American homeroom/English teacher's name in a Secret Santa event, I'd be at a complete loss. But this dude completely rose up to the challenge. Completely!

But there's more! Amazingly, there was something else I did not see coming. I probably could have seen this one coming had I not been distracted by all my classes, speech and debate night, two impending Christmas parties, Secret Santa among the teachers, being Santa at the December Talent Show, administering tests in all kinds of classes, grading piles of paper as high as the building across from mine, waking up at 4:30 every morning and not being able to get back to sleep, figuring out a gift for our aiyi, mailing stuff, the impending 2012 global destruction crises, and the Iowa caucuses, but, nonetheless, when I did get hit with this second blessing, I was grateful.

The week of the aforementioned Christmas party, a box of enormous proportions appeared up at the school. A box...for me. For Christmas. It was enormous. I held off on ripping the box loose from its shackles of grocery bag packaging until Christmas Eve in Beijing/December 23rd in Iowa, when my family and I were as one via Skype. Eagerly I opened the gifts the fam had sent me until one present leaped out of its box and onto me with vigor that far surpassed that of the other gifts: a mail order bride! How thoughtful!

Just kidding. The gift was a Twins hat, and a good 'un at that:

Two hats! Is it a happy ending? Is it an ending at all? Who can say? Perhaps this post should wait to be published in its entirety until I am about to die (experts' prediction: soon), until I have lost and regained even more Twins hats. Perhaps. But, alas, up it goes. I will keep close track of these caps, these hats, these symbols of love for the Minnesota Twins. Keep me accountable, check up on them, pray for the prosperity of the caps. Hopefully they can fare better than the Twins themselves have been.