man and hat, reunited

i've had the same blue knit hat for years and right around this time of year is when it always comes out, just as the season turns from sunny autumnal to rainy cold autumnal. this week i could not find it. our detective work led back to last saturday, when mm and i went the laurelhurst to see a matinee of The Muppets Take Manhattan - which if i may diverge here slightly still works as a film and is better than 99% of the movies being produced these days, not just kids' movies but all movies. end of divergence...

All week mm said 'call the laurelhurst and see if they have the hat' but i've always not liked talking on the telephone - probably some authority issue - and refused.

cut to friday night, we're on 28th post-having dinner w/ C & J at navarre, en route to some bar for drinks and mm points up the road to the laurelhurst and says "go. go now" to which i respond by trotting off into the autumn night. it was a long shot. frankly i may not have lost it there. Could have been anywhere really. What's more, even if i had lost it at the laurelhurst the odds of it finding its way into the lost and found bin and waiting there for me, quietly hoping for my return, were slight at best.

movies were ending and there was cleaning going on. all the popcorn was out of the popper and a man stood reading a periodical waiting for people to clear out. He told me he couldn't leave his station as he was the only person out front. A moment later another employee materialized. The magazine-reading man asked her to check the lost and found closet for my hat. She turned to do so. I stood nervously - full of halibut and belgian stout beer from dinner - waiting, preparing to say goodbye, thinking about loss, the ephemeral, the transitional.

and then she walked out from the closet w/ my hat on her hand and i was suddenly out the door, running to meet my wife and friends at a bar, hat on head.