The Kind of Guy I Am

One of the things that I have learned in my life is that we should never label people. This is particularly true when we make decisions about a person simply based on the way that they look or the clothes they wear. Such labels presume to prejudge us. Despite this knowledge, most of us do still label others. In fact, many times we even label ourselves. Generally, when we label ourselves the intent is not to be negative. Our personal labels tend to be used to explain some feature or personal attribute. “I am big boned,” “I have always been skinny,” “I am just very observant,” to list but a few of the labels we give to our selves.

I am guilty at times of placing labels on people. I work against this and most times I am successful in forestalling any judgment until I really get to know a person. While I have gotten better at not labeling others, I do still place labels on myself. One label that I have placed on myself is that I am a “Hat Guy.” I have not always been a hat guy. As best as I can tell I became a hat guy fairly late in my thirties, or certainly by the time I was in my early forties. For me, becoming a hat guy was really more a matter of my evolution. As my hair became thinner, I seemed to notice that I began to wear hats.

Some people are born hat guys. My twin boys are that way. Their very first pictures, taken minutes after their birth, shows them sporting those hospital beanie caps that are typically blue for boys or pink for girls. The boys are ten now and even this morning as they left the house for school they both were wearing hats (Steelers Super Bowl Championship cap for Alex, and a Roots Toque in matching Pitt Basketball colors for Max). They are still hat guys.

There are guys that consider themselves jeans guys. These guys swear that all they ever wear are jeans. Then there are sneaker guys, the guys that own ten or twelve pairs of sneakers. If you are a Seinfeld fan you may recall that Jerry Seinfeld is a sneaker guy. There are sweater guys. Imagine seeing Bobby Knight without a sweater. Bobby is a sweater guy. But me, I am just a hat guy.

I have noticed lately that there are a number of us hat guys. Some of us are pretty famous. Who can’t envision Samuel L. Jackson, the famous actor wearing his Kangol hat backwards (with the kangaroo visible) he is one cool looking hat guy. Then there is country singing star Tim McGraw (you know Faith Hill’s husband). He is a hat guy. He is always seen wearing his cowboy hat (I think they have gotten bigger over the years). Just recently I saw him and his wife on a television show (alright the truth is that it was Oprah and now one of my other secrets is out) cooking together, and there he was wearing a hat, in the kitchen! You really have to be a hat guy to wear a hat when you are cooking, unless perhaps he has some other motive for wearing his hat all the time in public?


I have a large collection of hats. My current favorite is a bright yellow one that most of my friends say doesn’t look good on me. My wife has not commented on this hat and whether or not the color is right for me, but then she is probably so busy working on my many other foibles that the hat issue can for now at least wait a while. Then there is the friend who commented on my hat “is this hat thing new with you?”

My hat collection includes a black Starbucks Barista hat that my brother managed to get for me one Christmas. At the time, you had to actually work at Starbucks to have one of those. Now, you can get them on eBay for about $50.00 bucks. I think mine was purchased for less than $10. That hat caused a woman in Arizona to stop me in a grocery store to ask if I was an owner of a Starbucks. That was a strange question to ask a guy with a basket of groceries just because he was wearing a hat. Then again, perhaps it suggests that maybe I don’t look so goofy after all when wearing a hat.

There are guys that look cool no matter what hat they are wearing. My brother in law has a black ski hat he wears that looks like the equivalent of a thick stocking turned upside down with a knot tied in the top. Like most things he wears, he makes the hat look cool. Of course, he also used to wear his Pennsylvania State Trooper hat before he retired, and managed to make that pointy top hat look pretty cool too.

I am not cool. My hats don’t make me look cool, mysterious, or even hide my identity. I wear hats because my head is bald. The hat keeps me warm in the winter, and keeps me from getting sunburned in the summer. I don’t wear hats when I cook or when I am indoors so I am not hiding under mine like a certain country singing sensation. I do however wear hats at night (another secret let out). Before you laugh at that just remember the line from The Night before Christmas which goes “and Ma in her kerchief and I in my cap.”

I think that being a hat guy has made me stand out lately. I was working in Canada two weeks ago when the weather was cold, snowy, and just plain nasty. All of the guys that I was with that week did not wear hats. So each day as we left the building, I would don my hat while the other guys would just walk out into the snow. I don’t know but maybe the guys in Canada just have a much stronger constitution than me. Or maybe, just maybe, no one ever told them about just how cool it would look for them to pick out their own personal hat and wear it all the time.

Come to think of it, my wearing a hat is just a part of my personal leadership. I wear hats because they make sense to me. It is not about style, fashion, or even good looks. I am just a hat guy, and beyond how they help me to stay well I don’t think I ever thought much about them. I guess this is one label that is going to have to stick. I am just a hat guy. It is part of who I am.