Buying Hats.

nedhepburn:

I have a gigantic, monstrous head. It defies all laws and logic with its wrecking-ball like demeanor and not to mention giant weight. It is - quite frankly - the biggest head I have ever seen, and I am the owner of it. It’s strange and cumbersome. The experience of owning it is not unlike being the owner of a pet depressed gorilla on a block full of yappy dog owners.

This has made hat and sunglasses buying an absolute travesty. Here are three true stories:

Little League Baseball, 1994-1997. My helmet was a special order helmet that “stretched” out not unlike the way one elongates a dining room table. It had various clasps that allowed it to “stretch”, which often pulled out my hair upon removal. Because of this, I would go to great lengths not to take off the helmet.

8th Grade Graduation, 1998. They had to special order my graduation cap from a special company in Malaysia just so I could have the same colored hat as everyone else.

Summer, 2007. Fedoras were suddenly “in style”, and I walk into a hat shop in Hollywood. I ask the proprieter of the store “do you have any Fedoras” but before I can finish my sentence he interrupts me with “I don’t think there’s anything for you here”.
I say “In the entire store?”
He says “Your head is too big for this store”.
True story.

I’ve contemplated suing hat makers for the misuse of the phrase “One Size Fits All”, as I had to sit on the sidelines the entirety of the trucker hat phase, and if it wasn’t for dumb luck I wouldn’t have eventually found a XXL Fedora (in 2008, when the Fedora craze was dramatically waning).

That’s right. Double Extra Large. It’s not fun being relegated to the “Big & Tall” hat section, not in the least. What’s one to do? Cry gigantic tears onto my humungous pillow? No. Thankfully, there are a few who take pity on the cranially endowed. I have a special website I am wont to visit for a vast array of hats. And thanks to the wonder of Photoshop I have the ability to “preview” a hat, as I imagine a physical shop for these freakishly enormous hats would only be able to store four or five at a time due to their size. However, not unlike marking up gigantic tshirts for fat people, owners of large heads are subject to the whims and whimsy of the sellers conscience. You are to find mark ups of up to (and some exceeding) 20% just for the larger headed model of a hat. It’s a sad, sad world, especially for those of us with big heads. When it rains, the big headed of the world are rained on that just much more (for they have giant heads with more surface area for the rain).

Amazingly I was able to purchase this hat, at an affordable price. I thank the makers of said hat, and I look forward to doing business with them again.

Ned, you are not alone. My head is big too. I gave up with the hats.

BIG HEADS UNITE!