Penguin Hat Jealousy

I’m not a person who’s particularly tuned in to contemporary trends. One reason is because I’m lazy and don’t like spending the time to notice things. Another is because if everybody is doing something, it automatically makes me want to do something else, simply to be cantankerous and ornery. (I’m practicing to be an old man with a droopy moustache and overalls who sits on his porch in a rocking chair and continually rants and raves about things of an inconsequential nature.)

However, even I can’t help but notice the current trend of winter hats for children. (How could I not? It’s been winter in Minnesota for about nine months now!! But I won’t allow myself to get into that again!! Hopefully!!)

Everywhere you look, you’ll see kids wearing winter hats that look like animals. There are frogs and penguins and Ninja Turtles and Perry the Platypuses* and dogs and so many others, all out in force. (If there isn’t a sasquatch one, that’s a million dollar idea for somebody to run with. Follow it up with an abominable snowman, and you’re retired, just like that!)

I have to admit, these hats make me sort of jealous. Not jealous in a practical sense, since I’d never actually wear anything like that now. My current fashion protocol is essentially modeled after Shredded Wheat. Its objective is blandness and not standing out in a crowd. My goal is to be able to blend in seamlessly with the background in a warehouse full of cardboard boxes, should that need ever arise. It’s a good style for me; simple and efficient, and it doesn’t turn me into a walking billboard for some gigantic athletic company.

Still, I kind of wish I had a penguin hat back when I was a kid. I’m not saying that it would have made my childhood better or more enjoyable, but still, what kid wouldn’t want a hat that looks like a penguin? You’d have to have a heart of stone not to!

Oh well. I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.

But still, all hope isn’t lost! Maybe there’s some similar type of hat out there that I could get behind, one that wouldn't completely go against my current fashion protocol. Hmm, I wonder…

*“Where’s Perry?”