Hat of the Week - Genesis

I think I have always liked hats. It has the whiff of "dressing up" a game I enjoyed from my earliest memories.
I never felt confident enough to wear hats consistently as a youth as it was a hatless period in my culture.

How I overcame my hat insecurities.
I was serving a mission for my church in Australia. Firstly I got a bit of sun stroke I think, and after that it was intolerable for me to feel the sun directly on my head.
Secondly, I was a missionary, in AUSTRALIA. If you care what people think of you then, well, lets just say I had nothing to lose when it came to others perceptions of how I dressed.
So having a degree of necessity and having shed most of my sense of pride, dignity and conformity (you might think your an outsider now, but just try being a preacher in Murray Bridge, South Australia).

This meant that post mission I wore hats a lot more often, but as any hat wearer knows, it messes up your hair. Given the style of hair I preferred it meant my hat waring was an occasional thing. That changed by the fact of testosterone - which is the cause of "male pattern baldness". This accomplished two things - one it proved I was a MAN. My gender had been brought into question a number of times in my youth through afore mentioned "outsider" status. Two it meant the elimination of "hat hair", thus removing the final barrier to almost constant hat wearing.

I currently own over 20 hats, collected over almost as many years. I feel obliged to disclose that nearly half of them are "baseball" style caps. In the hat higher-achy of my mind they barely qualify as a "real" hat. Mainly because they are socially acceptable head-ware. The less common the a hat is, the more "HAT" they are on my mind.

I have decided to share my hat love with whosoever cares, (besides Magna, one more reason for the love Magna) thus am Launching my "Hat of the Week".