The Spring Season Means Different Things to Different People

For some it is a time to get their yard looking like somebody actually lives in the house. For others it is a time to plant flowers to be enjoyed when the sun stays out more than two days in a row. For me it is a time to clean out my closet to see what still fits and what should be thrown away. The first thing I did was pull out all the baseball caps I had jammed on the top shelf. To my surprise I had more than 20 hats that actually represented 20 different times in my life. My favorite hat was in front. It was light blue and had ‘Kerrybunkport’ sewn into the front of the cap clearly demonstrating which candidate I supported in the last presidential election. Kerry lost but I still wear the cap hoping to annoy anybody who might be visiting from the red states. Another hat was a kind of dirty white and had the initials ‘HC’ on it, whose meaning I have long forgotten, but I remembered was the first cap I bought to conceal the fact that my mother had passed the baldness gene onto me from all the men in her family.

As soon as I put it on I remembered why I hated it so much. Instead of a plastic adjuster strap at the back it had an elastic band around the inside rim so that one size fit all. The major problem was that it cut off all the blood flow to my brain making me even dopier than usual. The first time I wore it to keep the sun off my head I thought I was having a stroke but as soon as I took the hat off the headache went away. When I put it back on the pain came right back. Why I hadn’t just thrown it out I don’t know, but as I say, it cut off the blood flow to my brain. I then came to the hat that had survived five summers at Long Sands Beach. It was totally faded and there was little left of the emblem on the peak. I remembered when it was first given to me. It was bright red and displayed the emblem for Boston University. I got it to commemorate some research I did with Boston University’s biotech programs. The concept of biotechnology excited me but the program never went anywhere because of politics. I returned that cap back to the top shelf for my first day at the beach this summer, hoping it wouldn’t wear out before we got a more enlightened government in office.