It's Friday night, it's slow because people are out in real life doing real things.
But one must have a Friday night thread in the Lounge.
We've received Christmas presents all our lives, and I'm sure everybody at times has gotten unusual gifts like pet rocks or Geraldine Ferraro's autobiography and somesuch, but how about unusual gifts that ended up being truly appreciated?
A few years ago, a friend of mine was in an antique store in London, wishing to find something unusual for me. He was shown a bush helmet, obviously of British manufacture and obviously pretty old. The proprietor there assured him it was an unusual antique, having been used by Lord Baring when governor of British East Africa during the 1950s.
The friend was dubious about the story, but as it wasn't premiumly-priced for its historic connections, bought it anyway, thinking I would find it a good curiosity.
I not only found it unusual, but useful.
Out here in the Sandhills of Nebraska, cowboy hats are the usual headgear.
But there's a problem with cowboy hats; they look good only on certain people.
On everybody else, they just look ridiculous.
There's a certain manner, or attitude, or style, to wearing a hat.
Oddly, my father, who was born and raised in Pennsylvania and then spent many of his years in New York City, upon coming to Nebraska, always looked like the real article, wearing a cowboy hat, whereas I, one of his sons, born and raised in Nebraska, simply looked stupid wearing a cowboy hat.
Not quite as stupid as Chief S itting Bull, the bird-smacking stoned red-faced primitive, wearing a cowboy hat, but almost as stupid.
There's a certain manner, or attitude, or style, to wearing a hat well.
Upon unwrapping this present, I placed the bush helmet on my head.
"Man, that is s-o-o-o-o-o-o you," the friend said; "you were born to wear that."
Because of facial and neck skin supersensitive to the sun, I took to wearing the bush helmet while roaming around the sun-drenched Sandhills; later on, I added khaki shirts and shorts similar with those worn by ANZAC troops of the first world war.
Because I tend to be aloof and distant and formal even in casual situations (due solely to being deaf, not due to snobbishness), and because the Sandhills very much resemble, with a few significant exceptions, the highlands of former British East Africa, I feel utterly natural and eminently comfortable in this attire.
Thanks to a friend who bought me something he thought I would just display on top of a bookcase or something.
