The Hat

I was standing there just waiting for the crosstown bus in the rain. Today was a cold and rainy morning during the rush to get to work, and I understand, I do, how people here only ever, (and usually only can) think of themselves. I have to get to the office. I have to catch that train. I have to get into that restaurant on Friday night. I have to get those shoes. I have to get tickets to see that play. I have to I have to I have to.

That’s one of the things that drives me crazy about New York - so many people with so many different wants and needs all on one little island all intersecting all the time, that it makes it difficult sometimes to feel like you belong, always leaving you to wonder: where do I fit in?

I was standing there just waiting for the crosstown bus in the rain under one of the construction overhangs (that are everywhere in the city) making for a nice break from having to use an umbrella (all of mine are maimed anyway, broken and open with crooked metal veins). Yet there on the Upper East Side was a woman who was determined in her early morning I have to, to push past me with her umbrella wide open regardless, unaware of anyone but seemingly herself. She clipped the edge of her Burberry umbrella against my head as she blew by, the pointy edge catching my knit winter white hat (my favorite white one with the flower on the side that I usually never let myself wear because it’s too nice) taking it with her, right off my head as she passed.

I watched, startled, as she began to walk away with it swinging, almost suspended in the air by her shoulder. I opened my mouth to speak, to yell (I was furious), but nothing came out. Did that really just happen? Truth is I had a feeling it was going to happen. I could sense her walking towards me the way you can sense a winter snowstorm just before it’s about to break. But I didn’t move. I made the conscious decision to stand my ground because surely, right there on that large sidewalk, she had more than enough room to pass leaving me unscathed. Surely in all the city I can still at least stand in one place, I can still have one small piece of sidewalk, one mere bit of pavement to myself, even if just for a few minutes, that’s unobstructedly my own.

The anger of realizing that no space in New York is ever really just your own, made my finally say, "Excuse me!" in a voice much stronger than I was expecting. At the sound the woman then stopped and noticed the unfamiliar small white object that had now dropped to her shoulder and rested there peacefully. The other people all waiting for the bus watched as this whole little tableau began to unfold, and I wondered what they were thinking as she stopped, confused, and turned to me, "But this isn’t mine!" she shouted in disgust. And with one quick sweeping motion she flung the hat from her shoulder with an abrupt flick of her wrist. I watched unmoving as my little white hat with the flower on the side that I never usually let myself wear, flew in slow motion through the air until it fell into a puddle on the side of the road.

My eyes drifted from the hat on the ground to the woman (she still didn’t understand, her cheeks red with confusion now, her eyes still shouting I have to I havetoIhaveto) and for a moment I couldn’t move. The look on my face must have been what made her stop and not simply keep on walking, must have been what made her stand there (along with everyone else), watching and waiting while I suppressed the overwhelming feeling that was pushing its way up around my heart -the feeling that somehow everything, no matter how much you try to protect it, always ends up getting tainted, ruined, taken away from you against your will. "I know," I said, pained as I walked over to the hat, now soaking and dirty, and slowly bent down and picked it up before looking her in the eyes. "It’s mine."