When I was the wee age of 14-years-old, I discovered a previously dormant, near fetish desire to start a collection. Now, it wasn’t anything too weird like pictures of feet or slides of blood from those most unfortunate enough to encounter and be within arm’s reach of me while I wear the “Happy Mask”, nor was it anything common like pictures of feet or slides of peoples’ blood. No, I decided I would collect hats. Big hats, small hats, simple hats, intricate hats, French hats, Russian hats, hats that are quite tall, and even hats made of candy if they wouldn’t melt in the rain and my mouth. By Christmas two-double-ought-seven, I already had a quaint little collection started; however, my eccentric tastes were left unsatisfied by a truly awesome hat. After watching my most favorite movie ever, Kill Bill, followed by my other most favorite movie ever, Kill Bill Vol. 2, about three consecutive times, I decided on the solution to my irritating dilemma. I would add the king of hats to the very tip top of my Christmas wish list! It is…







Now my parents, believing this was all just some awkward adolescent phase like the “Sculpt Things out of Clay” phase, or the more recent “Extreme Pyromania” phase, weren’t exactly willing to shell out a good 80 bucks for a silky 16th century gentlemen’s hat that I was only going to wear once or twice, so it took quite a bit of begging, whining, bomb threats and the like before I was sure they were convinced that if I got it, I was sure as hell going to wear it… But only time would tell if I actually got the silly thing.
Soon enough my entire garden was dead from the cold and McKinleyville wasn’t blanketed with snow on Christmas day! I rushed forth from my chamber at 5:30 am and into the living room where I ate delicious candy from a giant festive sock and greedily yanked for multi-colored boxes labeled Morgan boxes under a plastic, pine-scented tree! I went through all the cool boxes first, many of which contained vibrantly colorful bras which I wore on my head the rest of the day and action figures from the many video games I play to fill up the devastatingly cavernous hole in my life, but soon enough I moved on to the more mediocre looking boxes. And then I was done. No top hat. I would have been extremely disappointed if our new Wii hadn’t been thoroughly distracting me, but we had a new Wii, and so I was thoroughly distracted. However, my mother soon handed me a mediocre looking box I had missed, and upon its opening, I shouted out in pure euphoria: “HOLY CHEETO BAN-FRIGGEN-DITO! IT’S A TOP HAT!”, or something of that general idea. And then I wore it on top of the vibrantly colored bras, and it was a very good Christmas indeed.