This Is Grandpa's Hat

As a little kid, my grandmother used to entertain my sisters and me with a rhyme about hats; about Grandma and Grandpa's hat, to be specific. Like most rhymes for children, it involved the use of silly voices and some symbolic hand jive, but for all its simplicity, we would often ask Grandma to tell it again. (Hey, it was the early '80s; Nintendo hadn't been invented yet. Cut us some slack.)

Basically, it went a little like this:

These are grandma's glasses.

This is grandma's hat.

This is the way she folds her arms

Just like that.

These are grandpa's glasses.

This is grandpa's hat.

This is the way he folds his arms

Just like that.

Now, the reason I bring this up is that when doing the gestures to suggest the appearance of "grandpa's hat," Grandma would hold her hands in such a way as to suggest a rather tall hat (think stovepipe top hat.) As a child, this struck me as an exaggeration on Grandma's part, as that the only hat I had ever personally seen Grandpa wear was a flat cap and those suckers are not exactly known for being tall.

Then again, Grandma didn't wear hats at all, so maybe that should have been a clue that I wasn't to take the rhyme as gospel. However, that didn't stop me from wondering why Grandma didn't adjust the hand jive to closer reflect the truth as her granddaughters saw it.

So today, we're going to look at Grandpa's hat. Because I'm feeling a little nostalgic.

Flat caps seem to go by a variety of names: driving cap, Jeff cap, and--in this particular instance--Mikey cap. Not entirely certain why, but a flat cap by any other name would still be just as flat.

...Somewhere in England, a dead Bard is probably whirling like a gyroscope in his grave over that last bit. But as long as he doesn't rise from the grave to exact revenge, I think I'm okay.

For those among us who like our hats a little more along the lines of fun, how about a patchwork plaid flat cap? C'mon--with all those different colors, that hat is bound to match just about everything in your wardrobe.

Of course, if you would rather just have one kind of plaid, there's a flat cap for you, too.

Heck, if you like a blown-up houndstooth-check flat cap, there's one for you. As an added bonus, this one and the one above it are both made by the same haberdasher, so give the link a click, will ya?

This dude is not my grandpa. However, you cannot deny the dude looks pretty fierce, so rock on, Old Dude. ROCK. ON.

And on that note, this is HH, signing off for the weekend. See you Monday!