Hat

When I was working in London Ontario many years ago, my nickname was “Hat”. They called me hat because I always wore a hat. They weren’t terribly clever, but the nickname was pretty inoffensive and the more you complain about a nickname, the harder it sticks. So, I became “Hat”.

When I transferred out of London a few years later, I was presented with a hat as a going away present that had “Hat” printed on it. Again, not terribly clever, but someone went to some trouble and I was touched. Almost every time that I have worn the hat, someone has made a comment like “Why aren’t the rest of your clothes named?” I actually thought that it would be kind of cool if you would put “shirt” on all of your shirts, “pants” on all of your pants, “Coat” on your coat and on and on and on. You get the idea.

 

I never did follow through with the idea, but the concept is sound. This was before all of the name branding that goes on today. You would be hard pressed to find an article of clothing that doesn’t have someone’s name on it. It’s generally the name of the celebrity or the manufacturer, but it’s a name just the same.

 

I began thinking of this today when I was driving downtown and looking at all of the cars and trucks that have company names on them. Personally, I would keep the company name off of the vehicles, just in case my employee was a terrible driver. I did see one that made me think. It was the Belkin’s Auto Body courtesy car. Not only is it advertising Belkin’s, but it is also telling everyone that they should keep a few car lengths away from this car. They have already proven that they are a bad driver and have wrecked their vehicle and some other car while they were at it. I suppose they could just be getting hail damage fixed…sure!

You know, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to send anyone that has auto body work done on their car to either a defensive driving course or to be retested for their driver’s license. No matter whether you were the hitter or the hittee, you could do with some more training. I know there is the odd case where someone is just sitting at a red light and some brainless waste of flesh runs into you. They should just lose their license, but instead the cops call it a 50-50 accident and blame both parties because the father of the girl that ran into your daughter was rich and had done this before. That is a story for another blog.

Well, I guess I had better get out the sharpie and start putting names on my clothes. Maybe not names but dates, that way I would be able to know just how out of date my clothes actually are. I know one hat that is 27 years old.