Say Goodbye To My Little Hat

My youngest son can be a fiery little guy.   It’s part of his personality, and for the most part we just roll with it.  I compare him to college kids who go around protesting things.  They’re both mad about something, but they don’t really know what it is.  I remember sending him up to his room when he was three or four. He sat at the top of the steps and yelled down, “I hate your life.”  I guess he was semi-satisfied with his own life, but my life was making him particularly angry at that moment.  To be fair.  As he’s gotten older, he has learned to control his feelings more.  Kind of like Luke Skywalker did when he became a Jedi.

When he was two, we went on a family vacation to Puerto Rico.  I’m just going to say that he was less than thrilled with the temperature during our visit.  To me it felt great.  I have often told my wife that I don’t totally thaw out from winter until sometime in early July.  My guy spent the entire vacation making a face that was designed to let us know that he was hot.  This has affectionately become known as “hot face.”  It is in every picture we took while on that trip.

We spent the last two days of this trip on the small island of Culebra.  It was sunny and beautiful and there were plenty of opportunities for my youngest to make “hot face.”  On the morning of our last day we returned our rental car and, while we waited for the ferry back to the main island, took a walk around Dewey (the main town on the island).   We ducked in and out of some shops and bought some chachkies that I’m sure were a complete waste of money.  Nothing better to remind you of a fantastic Puerto Rican vacation than a plastic sea turtle made in Vietnam.  Having seen enough of the shops, we started walking toward the southern side of the small town.  At this point our little guy decided that it was time to let us know that he was unhappy.  Now, I can’t remember what set him off.  The heat?  Maybe.  Being carried?  Possibly.  Having to wear a hat?  Again, possibly.  Or maybe he just remembered that he hated my life and he wanted to express that.  At the peak of his rampage, my wife was carrying him and we were walking on a little bridge that crossed a small waterway.  In a fit of protest, my dude ripped the sunhat off of his head and hurled it into the water.  NOOOOOOoooooo.  We loved that hat.  His brother had worn it when he was little.  It had survived many adventures.  One of the selling features of this particular hat was that it floated.  If you were wearing it on the water and you dropped it, you didn’t have to worry about it sinking.  We all stood there on the bridge, and watched as the hat proudly floated past thick mangroves toward the ferry dock and the open sea.  Even my youngest took a break from his tantrum to admire the seaworthiness of his headgear.  Twenty minutes later, we boarded the ferry, minus one hat.

When I think of this, I like to imagine that the hat is still floating through the Caribbean, having adventures.  Then, one day, when my son is older, and on a vacation with his family.  His youngest son will be throwing a fit on a beach somewhere in Barbados, and that hat will wash up next to him………  And he’ll pick it up and angrily throw it back into the sea.