On going to the French Quarter and buying a hat

I have a thick, curly head of hair and while this can mean some stunningly beautiful hair days (if I dare say so myself), it also means an unfortunate pattern of really bad hair days. It's just the way it is; these extreme hair states depend on each other for their existence. And so I've found that having a good hat for such sad occassions can be very helpful for my self-esteem as well as my sense of aesthetic expression in the world. I've been needing to buy a hat so I went to the French Quarter where there are most obviously good hats to be had.

I had the perfect hat that came up missing after Mardi Gras this year. I've learned that it is quite common for people to lose hats during Mardi Gras. Now, I don't understand what happens exactly, but somehow, you go to Mardi Gras with a hat on and when you come home you don't have it anymore. I don't know where the hat goes. But mine was clearly gone and I've been wanting a new one and so I drove to the French Quarter to get one. And it's a crisp, spring day and there are lots of people there - groups of church volunteers in matching t-shirts, newly minted drinking age couples who carry their open containers of alcohol around giddily and a 5-piece band on the sidewalk with a fiddle player taking the lead on a Tracy Chapman song. And a person painted solid gold and an alcoholic from Charleston, South Carolina who came to New Orleans 30 years ago and fell in love and can never, ever leave and a tarot card reader named Velvet. (Velvet read my cards, said everything was going to be okay and gave me a red stone and told me to burn a red or pink candle tonight.)

So, I go to the place I bought my last hat and within about 10 minutes I've found a pretty good hat. You see, a good hat is not hard to find in the French Quarter. Buying a hat did remind me of a few things I know but had forgotten:

1) My head is much larger than the average head
2) Hats are made in China
3) Hat = itchy, scratchy head