Graham's True Stories
Number 25, The Baseball Cap
Have you noticed how some Americans have a thing about hats?
Sorry, make that most American males. Usually beat up caps announcing affiliation to some long-forgotten baseball team or an afternoon at a theme park in the Bronx. Maggie and I often wondered whether they ever take them off.
A friend from Vermont was a case in point. We'd eaten at his home the previous trip and now it was our turn to provide a little hospitality at a restaurant of his choosing.
It was all pretty up-market -- you know, more forks than courses and dinner-suited waiters who filled the water glasses after every sip - but none of it phased our friend, he just sat there in a well-cut suit, shirt and tie, English leather shoes .... and a filthy baseball cap that I had observed him using a couple of days earlier to save the wheel nuts from his car getting muddy.
A few weeks later, at an antiques show where we had a motel room and he was using a camper, he came along to our place for a shower.
About five minutes into his shower we heard a small giggle erupt from behind the bathroom door. It grew into near-hysterical laughter and eventually our friend, now dressed, returned, still unable to control his mirth.
Share, the joke, we demanded.
“Well,” he said, “I got halfway through showering and realised that I'd still got my cap on....”.