dope hat

Many years ago, my family and I went to Walt Disney World. We took regular trips to the renowned resort in central Florida, often accompanied by our friend Randi, when we were still on speaking terms with her. On this particular trip, we were meeting my wife's brother and his then-girlfriend, later-wife, soon to be ex-wife. They were flying down to Florida, while we opted to drive the more interesting route along the Eastern seaboard. My brother-in-law and his girlfriend would be staying at Disney's All-Star Music Resort, the same hotel in which we secured accommodations. On our first night, we made plans to meet and eat dinner at Downtown Disney (now known as "Disney Springs")

We arrived early, dropped off our luggage and drove over the the Disney shopping complex. We wandered around the quaint little shops looking at things that we would never buy in a million years. We were on vacation and that's what we do. My brother-in-law had arrived earlier in the day and we planned to rendezvous at the World of Disney store, the centerpiece of Downtown Disney.

We wandered into World of Disney, a sprawling, multi-room retail store jam-packed with everything and anything you could imagine, prominently emblazoned with the famous Disney logo. There was housewares and t-shirts and bath towels and flatware and pins and toys and who-knows-what-else! We congregated at a display of hats. There were straw hats and baseball-style caps and, of course, the famous mouse ears. At the same time, we all spotted the same hat. It was the dumbest looking hat we had ever seen. It was a small straight-side, somewhat bucket-style hat, very reminiscent the one sported by Leo Gorcey in countless "Bowery Boys" films in the 40s. Of course, Leo Gorcey worse his chapeau strictly to elicit laughs. This hat was being sold in earnest, as a legitimate hat. At least we thought so. And this hat was embroidered with little Mickey Mouse icons all around its main portion. Did I mention how dumb this hat looked? We each picked it up to examined it, laughing as we each got our turn. Even our young son giggled at the obvious absurdity of the hat. We wondered aloud as to who would actually buy and wear this stupid hat?!?!

Suddenly, we got our answer.

Up strolled my brother-in-law and my future sister-in-law. And perched on the top of her head was that stupid hat. She smiled her stupid smile and modeled the hat for us, explaining that the had bought it earlier and just needed to have it.

My wife, my son, Randi and I all clammed up. Our eyes grew wide but our mouths stayed clamped shut. We silently made our way to the front entrance of the massive Planet Hollywood restaurant. Our eyes never lost sight of that stupid hat sitting atop my future sister-in-law's stupid head like a big, fucking albatross.

After a mostly quiet dinner — our collective eyes never waning our gaze from that hat — we said our goodbyes and went off to find our car. Once safely inside the car, we roared with laughter.

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