Help Yourself Why Don't You? :rolleyes:

[ablearrow]

A few years back on St Patty's day in Savannah, GA's historic down town, my wife and I noticed a little hat shop on the main strip. We step out of the chaos to browse the selection, and enjoy the tranquility of the shop. I purchased a Kangol ventair knit paperboy in black. Nothing fancy, just a nice simple summer hat for the Georgia weather that day. No sooner than ten minutes out of there, an attractive young gal comes right up to me and says "nice hat" and reaches for straight for my head!:rage: Making it obvious to her that she’s invading my personal space by dodging and weaving her mitts I politely as possible refuse her curiosity in my hat. Just as my wife motioned towards her, she casually disappears into the crowd. [huh]

My wife and I just laugh it off and continue our outing.

Later on that night it happens again, only with a different gal who seemed fluidly motivated! This time I gently blocked her motion to my hat in which she reply's "its just a hat" I return with a snicker and say "I love everything that's old: old friends, old times, old wine and old manners, but I’m guessing your just to young to understand..... The look on her face was priceless.

I’m not the oldest chap in town, but when did manners die off????

 

[Jovan]

Hopefully that won't happen when I meet Vintage Betty in Orlando, which I expect I'll be wearing my only hat. Of course, people might just write us off as Disney World staff off duty. lol

 

[Edward]

I agree, there is an element of invasion of personal space, and it is just rude not to ask. If someone did ask (and they seemed hygienic lol ) I'd probably be fine with it. Especially if it was a pretty lady (I can see how trying on a gentleman's hat might be a fairly effective flrting technique ).

When a serious hat person lies their vintage Borsalino on a counter, it's going to be on its crown.

Mark.... Would you explain this for we relative newbies, please? I've always been under the impression that the 'correct' thing to do was to leave a hat with a curled brim (top, Homberg, bowler, etc) on it's top when setting it down (though presumably this has to be excutred with care with a topper in company, as I know it was considered a serious faux pas to hold the hat by the brim with the inside pointing upwards in company as it made the bearer look like a common begger, so it was thought). A hat with a flat brim should be sat on the brim, crown up (with a snap-brim, i either snap it up, or set it just on the edge of a shelf with the snap pointing down over). That's what I gathered, anyhow - I thought to help preserve the brim's shape if wet, also to stop the crown from being marked. Does this only apply for storage? Or is it the idea that it's harder to life the hat by the brim rather than the crown when it's set down crown-up?

fftopic: BTW.... like the avatar. Am I right in thinking that was taken in Malta? I was down there at a conference about 18 months ago, stayed on for a few extra days. Great place. Loved travelling the island on those old busses. I have a ceramic miniature of one of those Leylands sitting on my desk here.

 

[Feraud]

I think the disrespect shown by grabbing a hat off someone's head is not intentional. No one would ever take your laptop, blackberry, or ipod and start fooling with it. People respect the importance(however you define important) and personal privacy of such items.
Common sense dictates you do not remove something from someone's body and try it on.

 

[Havana]

Coming from a western hat wearing tradition, touching another man's hat without permission is really like touching his most private body part. It's highly inappropriate and just not done. Grabbing or knocking a hat off someone's head is the first stage of a fight. "You never touch another man's hat." That's a custom well known among cowboys but in the larger world people do things and don't always realize how offensive their actions are especially today. I recommend some tolerance but speak up if you can't stand it. Luckily, most of my hats are so dirty no one really wants to touch them.

 

[RondoHatton]

Disgusting

More than once in 23 years I have had the disgusting displeasure of discovering that, while looking away or turning my back a moment, some boor has helped themselves to trying on (sound of dry heaves) my motorcycle helmet! Caught a few before they could don it and reminded all coldly how rude they are, how I sneezed and coughed in that thing (hawking and wheezing for effect), "do you like to smell locker rooms?", etc.
While not quite a "Monk" character, this gives me the heebie jeebies. A full face, full coverage motorcycle helmet is a rather intimate thing. Had to wear the damn thing home where it immediately got the isopropyl spray and baby shampoo wash / dry over fan and a shampoo myself. Yucch. To be invaded without second thought shows a sub human level of selfish entitlement also seen in red light runners, cell phone yakkers, and street racing yobs (a rash of which around here has killed/crippled many innocent bystanders lately).

 

[ScionPI2005]

That used to happen to me quite a bit. That was back in high school my senior year when I wore a Biltmore I used to have to school during the cooler months. My peers, especially in theater class, would take the hat away from me and wear it around. What bothered me most was that they would then toss it around amongst themselves (bear in mind this is a theater class where everyone is running around inside a large performing arts center before class starts). I think the hat got sort of beat up over all that activity after months.

 

[HamletJSD]

Fortunately this one has not happened to me, yet. I pray I'll be forgiven for the un-Christ-like attitude I am going to have if it ever does ... lol

fftopic:

Hopefully that won't happen when I meet Vintage Betty in Orlando, which I expect I'll be wearing my only hat. Of course, people might just write us off as Disney World staff off duty.

Jovan, I am out at Disney World every few weeks or once a month ... and that's what they tend to think of me!!!

 

[Colby Jack]

Well if you read of any fights/deaths at Disney World this weekend...it will be me if someone touches my hat!...:rage:

 

[Akubra Guy]

I've never had that problem fortunately but then again I never make my hat easily "available" for someone else to grab. As much as we all love our hats I am sure none of us can say that we haven't had the urge to do that very thing when we see a cool hat that belongs to someone else but would never act on that--at least without asking permission first!

I think that is called MANNERS, something that is sadly lacking in todays society and being quickly forgotten by many that at one time had them. But of course in a ME-First society there is no room for manners-right? I'm sorry, but I don't subscribe to that mentality and won't accept it from anyone else.

 

[Fletch]

Because a hat is no longer considered essential wear, it is instead relegated to the ranks of costume, and so a novelty item people can interact with as they wish.

:eusa_clap Spot on.

Western morés were mentioned. However, there is a Western tradition that allows the amputation of neckties in certain eating/drinking places. These end up festooning the ceiling. How do we feel about that?

Akubra Guy, I don't think I'd come within 5 yards of your lid if you were wearing the expression in your avatar.

 

[indycop]

Well if you read of any fights/deaths at Disney World this weekend...it will be me if someone touches my hat!...:rage:

Don't beat up mickey in front of your kids!!:eusa_doh:

 

[tandmark]

Mark.... Would you explain this for we relative newbies, please? I've always been under the impression that the 'correct' thing to do was to leave a hat with a curled brim (top, Homberg, bowler, etc) on it's top when setting it down (though presumably this has to be excutred with care with a topper in company, as I know it was considered a serious faux pas to hold the hat by the brim with the inside pointing upwards in company as it made the bearer look like a common begger, so it was thought). A hat with a flat brim should be sat on the brim, crown up (with a snap-brim, i either snap it up, or set it just on the edge of a shelf with the snap pointing down over). That's what I gathered, anyhow - I thought to help preserve the brim's shape if wet, also to stop the crown from being marked. Does this only apply for storage? Or is it the idea that it's harder to life the hat by the brim rather than the crown when it's set down crown-up?

Ah, friend, that's the difference between a hat dilettante like me and a real hat person like yourself. When I first started buying honest-to-goodness hats, the first ones I got were a Bailey porkpie and a Beaver Brand homburg. It was drilled into me that I was never to pick them up by their crowns, and that I was never to set them down on their brims.

Some years and an unjustifiable number of other hats later, I habitually lie all my hats down on their crowns. If it's got a sweatband, it's "upside down." There's a drawer just across the room here full of newsboy caps and such. They're all upside down. Even the Greek fisherman's cap bought during the Carter Administration that's been worn so many times it's an embarrassment to wear.

The only hat that's resting on its brim is a German-made loden hunting hat -- a dreispitze or, as some might say, a Pinocchio hat. If I put that one down on its crown, it tends to right itself, not unlike a gyroscope. But every time I do lie it down, I instinctively do so crown-down first, then do a double-take, and finally set it down more sensibly, on its brim.

That you actually THINK before you set your hat down is a wonderful thing. But I'm just a hat-dabbler, unable to set down my hats in anything but a routine, rote manner.

fftopic: BTW.... like the avatar. Am I right in thinking that was taken in Malta? I was down there at a conference about 18 months ago, stayed on for a few extra days. Great place. Loved travelling the island on those old busses. I have a ceramic miniature of one of those Leylands sitting on my desk here.

Spot on! The actual place was the bus terminus just across St. James Ditch from the Valletta city gate. One day while waiting for that bus, I snapped its picture.

My favorite part of Malta was the smaller island of Gozo. All of Malta is nice, though. Fewer tourists visit there than the place merits. Tiny as it is, two weeks wasn't long enough to see all the things there worth seeing.

Cheers,
Mark

 

[tandmark]

Coming from a western hat wearing tradition, touching another man's hat without permission is really like touching his most private body part. It's highly inappropriate and just not done. Grabbing or knocking a hat off someone's head is the first stage of a fight. "You never touch another man's hat."

So true, Havana. You might even say that's exactly why I've modified my approach to hat-etiquette in quite the way I have.

Being of pure-quill hillbilly stock, I come from a feudin' tradition wherein families gunned each other down for years on end on account of real or imagined slights. Apparently the mountain region of eastern Kentucky in my great-grandfather's day was a little like Mogadishu is today. This is, in actual fact, why my grandfather moved out of the mountains and even changed his last name.

But, alas, we live in a degenerate age in which political correctness means that one can no longer conspire with Cousin Delbert and Uncle Enis and Ol' Pappaw Jedadiah to commit mayhem with impunity against one's rude neighbors. :eusa_doh: That's why I prefer to make it harder for clueless oafs to grab my hat and plunk it on their brainless heads by the simple expedient of leaving it on my own head whenever I'm in a public place. If I MUST set a hat down in public for some reason, it won't be set crown-down between a clerk and me.

If clueless oafs can't easily do wrong, they're unlikely to inconvenience themselves in order to do wrong. And thus I'm unlikely to be obliged to break out the shootin' irons and the moonshine and go a-feudin'. Plumb pore excuse for a hillbilly though that might make me.

Cheers,
Mark

 

[Bammac]

Quote "If clueless oafs can't easily do wrong, they're unlikely to inconvenience themselves in order to do wrong. And thus I'm unlikely to be obliged to break out the shootin' irons and the moonshine and go a-feudin'. Plumb pore excuse for a hillbilly though that might make me."

Makes me yearn for simpler times...
"Ma, I missed the turkey,but I bagged me a Hatfield..."
<G>

Bam

 

[Bruce Wayne]

on the note of western hatwear, i read a long time ago that according to cowboy ediquite (sp) the only time a mans hat sould come of is in the house of God or a house someone sleeps in (hotels are not covered under this rule...)

 

[Havana]

A good rule of thumb might be to treat your hat like a gun in the sense that it's aways under your control. You don't hand it over to people you don't know and you certainly don't put it down anywhere others can just grab it.

 

[PADDY]

"How many times do I have to tell you...?"

"RIGHT SWEETHEART, cough up!! where is MY LID?? I really wish you'd ask ME first before putting your paws all over my Art Fawcett special!! :rage: "

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[thunderw21]

I haven't had too many problems, though I have had a few.

Once in class I had taken off my hat and placed it on the table next to me. A kid comes in, takes it and puts it on yelling "hey, look, I'm a pimp!". I quickly stood up and demanded it back.
A duel ensued which I easily won.

Here's another: I was speaking to an older gentleman while holding my hat in my hands. All of a sudden he spots the hat and starts punching it in a joking manner. I quickly pull it away before any damage could be done.

Although, I do enjoy when the ladies handle my hat and try it on. That doesn't seem to happen enough.

 

[J.T.Marcus]

Although, I do enjoy when the ladies handle my hat and try it on. That doesn't seem to happen enough.

Congratulations, You seem to be the first to have figured out that when a woman (any woman) puts your hat on her head, she is flirting with you!