Borsch Unamusingly Gets a Hat

OUTTA LEFTFIELD: Hats amore: No need now to kick the bucket lid
Published: Tuesday, June 21, 2011
By Mike Morsch
Executive Editor

It took some doing but I finally got a new lid.

Wahoooo, what zany adventures did he have searching for a new hat? Maybe he wants to buy a ridiculous hat of some sort, and his wife advises against it? Maybe he refers to famous hats from TV shows? Maybe some of his previous hats have been, shall we say, less than stylish?

For the past few years, I’ve been going round and round with The Blonde Accountant about my choice of headgear. I have more baseball caps than I can count and I wear different ones for different occasions. She has absolutely no problem with me wearing the baseball caps.

I think he should be true to form and refer to them as "baseball ballcaps."

But for a while now, I have wanted to branch out — to have options — some different and stylish hats available that were maybe a little more sophisticated than just a ballcap.

You could just say "cap."

Besides, I’m growing a bald spot on the back of my noodle and wearing something to cover that is becoming more imperative during the summer months because the reflection is starting to blind drivers and create traffic hazards.

If he had just jammed a few more words into that sentence, just imagine how much funnier it would have been! Bald guys with shiny heads, where does he GET this stuff?

So after much pondering, I have decided to toss my hat into the ring when it comes to my favorites: the Panama straw hat, the Frank Sinatra fedora, the Rocky low rider felt hat and the Gilligan bucket hat.

Reference to TV show hat: check.

Well, none of those choices impressed The Blonde Accountant.

Wife advising against choice of hat: check.

She does not wear hats and is of the general opinion that if I didn’t wear hats either, it just might be easier for me to pull my head out once in a while.

Huh? Pull his head out? I don't get that.

“You look stupid in that hat,” was the typical refrain any time I tried one on during the thousands of shopping excursions I’ve been on with her in the past six years.

“But Frank Sinatra looked cool in this hat,” I would counter.

Wow, a proper use of "counter" as a verb! I'm starting to suspect he doesn't know any other words to use in these situations.

All together now: “Well, you’re not Frank Sinatra.”

Last summer I thought I had found the perfect hat, a Sinatra cool fedora straw hat with a blue band. It was perfect. And I’m not just talking through my hat on that.

Ha... ha... ha. "Sinatra cool fedora straw hat" is one of the worst phrases I have ever heard - "cool Sinatra straw fedora" makes about 1,000,000 times more sense.

Apparently merely invoking the name of Sinatra is not enough to get this hat onto my head in public. I still have it sitting on my dresser hoping that someday it will become acceptably fashionable for the particular coconut that I am forced to carry around. At this point, though, I’m not allowed out of the house wearing it unless I am on my way to throw it in the trash.

Previous hats not being stylish: check. "Noodle," "coconut"... how many substitutes for "head" can we use?

Throughout the whole hat discussion, I always have thought my fallback position would be the Gilligan bucket hat. Surely I couldn’t look any stupider than Gilligan in a bucket hat. Turns out I was wrong about that.

"Stupider." Nice.

But the real game changer was leaving the hat decision in the hands of The Blonde Accountant for the past year or so. And why not? She already picks out all of my clothes, so there’s no reason she can’t pick out the hats, too. I figured as long as she was the one doing the choosing, then I couldn’t look stupid wearing one of her fashion decisions.

Turns out that I was wrong about that, too. Even with the hat decision squarely in her jurisdiction, my noggin was still bare all these many months.

Read those two paragraphs again. I dare you to try and figure out what the hell he's talking about. "Noggin" - synonym #3.

That is, until Father’s Day last weekend. I finally got a hat from The Blonde Accountant. And I didn’t even have to pass the hat to get it.

See that? See what he did there? We're talking about hats, so he used a phrase that has "hat" in it. It's clever! And FUNNY!

It is indeed the bucket hat that has finally won out. It is olive in color with an orange, gray and navy blue band. Of course, I got a whole new outfit that includes a golf shirt and flat-front shorts, and the hat is a perfectly coordinated accessory. That in itself shows you how far I’ve come in my fashion sense: I now know what accessories are.

Alright, we know he's dumb, unattractive, his breath smells, he spills things, he doesn't "get" shopping, etc etc etc... but really? "What's an accessory? My wife hides the dictionary!"

According to online research, the bucket hat, also known as a fishing hat, is a soft cotton hat with a wide and downwards sloping brim. A similar hat is used by the U.S. Navy and is called a “Dixie Cup” hat.

Why did he need to research what one looks like? He has one!!!

It has other names as well. In Australia, for example, it is called a “giggle hat.” Apparently the Australians think it’s a stupid-looking hat too if it has elicited so much laughter that the word “giggle” has been worked into its name.

This is spectacularly uninteresting and unamusing.

I can’t wait to try out my new hat, especially when we go down the shore this summer. I am a shoobie by nature, so maybe the new hat will help me look a little less out of place at the shore.

I don't know what a "shoobie" is. Nor do I wish to know.

Of course, with the new bucket hat will come bucket hat head. I’m not sure how to prevent that but I am going to try to convince The Blonde Accountant that hat head would be less of a problem in an as yet unused Sinatra cool fedora straw hat with a blue band. And hey, I just happen to have one of those sitting on my dresser.

Good lord, his writing is so cumbersome! I mean, look at it - look at how he puts words together. How on Earth this man is a published writer is beyond my ken. Saying "cool fedora straw hat" is akin to saying "cool Lamborghini red car."

If she goes for that, I’ll have to tip my hat to her.

And it wouldn't be a Borsch column if he didn't end it on a cheesy pun! But what, may I ask, is the meaning of the title - "No need to kick the bucket lid"? I know he gets a bucket hat, but... what the heck? I'll list this one under "Men are Dumb," due to the fact that, once again, his wife knows more about something than he does.