Hats Off to Individuality 2: This Time It's Bizarrely Personal

Let me set the scene. It’s a Saturday night. After being at two rather uninspiring bars, my housemate Ben and I are at Supermild, the only – and I do mean that – place to be in Adelaide at night. It’s surprisingly good tonight; surprising because we’d been there the night before and it had been exceedingly dull. Right now the music is great, the atmosphere is relaxed and we are sitting at a long table in the centre of the room with a couple of drinks in front of us. I’m wearing a black fedora. As several people around town can tell you, I always wear my black fedora when I go out. It’s my Thing. I am well positioned to have a good night. And then, from across the table I hear a yell: “You look stupid in that hat!”

I’m paraphrasing here. I was rather too shocked to take in the words exactly.

The guy who has just offered me this information is now walking towards us. He’s about our age, unshaven, dressed well enough but unexceptionally so. He is quite obviously drunk. He’s at Supermild with a bunch of people, who have declined to approach us with him. When he reaches us he says, loudly and with something approaching concern, “Don’t you know it’s rude to wear a hat inside?”

This I didn’t expect. Calling my hat stupid, well, fair enough, it might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but now I’m getting an etiquette lesson. I often like to dress as if I’m a teenager who’s travelled from the 1950s – a casual suit with sneakers, white socks and, of course, the hat – but where I just put on the clothes this guy’s brought along the moral philosophy. In fact I tell him, in an amused, easygoing way, that this is kind of an old-fashioned idea.

"No, it’s not old-fashioned –” he starts plaintively, but he doesn’t get any further.

“Isn’t going up to some complete stranger and yelling at them also rude?” demands Ben. He’s had a few drinks (so have I), not the best night and is not a fan of needlessly aggressive people at the best of times. So where, another time, he may have gently sent up this guy, he’s now just focussed on getting him out of our space as quickly as possible. The guy, for his part, seems taken aback at being challenged for challenging us. “That’s a valid point,” he concedes uneasily. However, he is still concerned with showing me the error of my ways. There is a time and a place for the hat, he tells me. At night and inside is neither. It’s rude, he continues to assert, without quite explaining why. My plan is to quietly ride out this lecture until our guest has run out of things to say, but Ben is riled.

“The hat is awesome,” Ben insists. “It makes him look awesome.” He lifts the hat off my head and puts it on the guy’s. “Now you’re awesome.” The guy smiles slightly, avers that he was awesome without the hat (without, once again, supporting his statements) and removes the fedora with some distaste. He returns to making his argument. Ben continues to suggest he should stop doing so. “You’re quite aggressive, aren’t you?” the guy counters defensively.

Here I realise that our speaker is, amongst any other talents he possesses, an accomplished alchemist of social interaction. He is able to yell at us, force his way into our conversation to berate me on a social point some decades out of date, and then magically transform himself into the injured party, helplessly savaged by ill-mannered ruffians. Ben insists he’s not being aggressive, just protective. This leads the guy to ask whether we’re a couple, which we inform him we’re not. Then, inquires the guy, what is Ben being protective of? “The hat,” Ben replies. The guy is starting to look uncomfortable. I think it’s because I am not reacting at all, aside from smiling to myself and waiting the situation out. He can’t gauge the effect of his spiel on its intended target. “I’m just giving my opinion,” he mumbles.

Here’s my chance (because, amusement notwithstanding, I’d like this conversation to wrap up). “And I thank you for it,” I say with as much sincerity as I can fake. “But I think now we should each go our separate ways so we can enjoy our nights.” The guy grabs at this suggestion like a life preserver. He agrees with enthusiasm, and returns to his friends.

With that out of the way, here are my thoughts on the rudeness of wearing a hat inside, at night. With apologies to people of previous generations, it no longer applies. When pretty much everyone (certainly every man) wore a hat as part of the unofficial uniform of life, there were guidelines to how you wore it. You’d take it off when you went into someone’s house, otherwise you’d look like you planned to leave as soon as possible and had no intention of making yourself comfortable. Nowadays, a hat is not a dress requirement; it is a fashion choice, no different to a scarf or a belt with a decorative buckle. No different, in fact, to a girl wearing a very short skirt. Once upon a time that would have been considered not only rude but indecent, and yet I don’t imagine our socially conscious friend took any of the girls so dressed to task. And anyway, even if you believe that wearing a hat inside is rude, once you yell at a complete stranger from across the room then you’re the one violating the social contract, no matter what decade you’re in.

Sadly, the matter is not yet closed. After a brief interlude, during which our friend has presumably been mulling things over, round two begins. The guy comes back and says, “Look, all I’m saying is that you should re-think wearing the hat.” Ben and I try to steer the conversation back to not having the conversation, but the guy has a new point. “Look, wearing the same thing to the same place two nights running is not very smart. You come back here wearing the same hat and you look stupid.” I’ve underestimated the man’s passion. I’m starting to think Michael Jackson’s death should be re-investigated; it’s entirely possible this guy murdered him for his persistent abuse of society’s hat centric mores. But Ben has picked up on something. “So you were here last night?”

“No,” responds the guy. “My friends were here, and they were telling me about this guy they saw wearing a hat. They were laughing at you,” he says directly to me, in an attempt, I assume, to show me how dire my predicament has become. The concern is wasted on me, though, because I’m thinking, “Are your friends so dull that the sight of a man in headwear was the highlight of their evening?” Sure, Supermild had been pretty uninteresting on Friday, but they must have been struggling.

By now Ben is just tired of the whole debacle. “Yeah, yeah, we’re just idiots, okay?” he says. Most guys intent on hassling us would jump on this opportunity. Ben has admitted fault. Our guy can say, “Yes you are”, walk away and proudly tell everyone about the idiots he just dissed. But we have a special breed of man in my fashion adviser here. “Oh no, I’m sure you guys are very smart. You look like smart guys.” This said almost dismissively. “I’m talking about social IQ. Wearing the same thing twice in two nights is just stupid.” (Should I tell him I wear the hat every time I go out? Will that lower my social IQ score?) “I’m sure you’ve gotten this from other people.”

Now, once again, I’ve been trying to take a back seat in this whole experience, hoping, as I would with a nasty rash, that the guy will just go away. But this point I feel I have to counter. “Actually, I always get complimented on my hat. Lots of people like it. You are currently in a minority of one.” This piece of information throws him for a moment, before he returns doggedly to social IQ. Ben in turn questions the social IQ of a man who randomly accosts strangers on their dress sense. The conversation is in danger of continuing in circular fashion until a merciful God kills us all. It becomes a little surreal when our self-proclaimed victim informs us that he went to an all-boys school, so “these barbs of yours are like teddy bears to me.” Finally, a friend of ours we’ve been waiting for arrives, looks back and forth bemusedly, and asks chirpily, “Can I borrow these two men?”

“Yeah, go ahead,” says the guy to her, with what sounds remarkably like relief, “rescue them.”

Ben walks off, but I have one last salvo coming my way. “I’m just telling you to stop wearing the hat,” he says. He has the air of an old pro doing a rookie a favour he really doesn’t have to. Perhaps because I’ve been the less aggressive in all this, he thinks he may still win me over.

“Okay. And I’m just telling you I’m not going to,” I say evenly. He seems honestly nonplussed that his aid is being rebuffed.

“Is this more about you and me than about the hat?” (What “you and me”? I don’t know you. The only context in which we exist is the one where you come up to me and abuse me. That’s all “you”, and nothing to do with “me”.)

“No,” I say, and I have the assurance that comes with being finally, entirely fed up. “This is about us following our original plan, where you go your way, I go my way, we enjoy our nights and we never, ever talk to each other again.” Without waiting for a reply, I turn my back sharply on the very last protector of hat etiquette and proceed to join my friends.

As a post-script, I will say that I enjoyed the rest of my night a great deal. A highlight was dancing with an attractive girl who introduced herself by borrowing my hat.