In Search of a Cap

Daniel announced this morning that he needs to bring a hat to school tomorrow.

"A hat? What kind of hat?" Tab asked. Daniel shrugged in reply.

When I dropped him off at school, I asked his teacher who answered airily, "Oh, a baseball cap or a painter's hat. We're going to decorate them."

Daniel has a few baseball caps--the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers--but both are dark blue and would probably not be easy to decorate. Besides, he likes them the way they are. Tab suggested I might find a painter's hat at Home Depot.

I haven't been to Home Depot in six or seven years; the twins, however, are frequent visitors in the company of Tab. It was they who helped me find the paint aisle. Unfortunately, the only painter's caps they sell there were made of a heavy paper. I wonder if you can even buy cloth painter's caps anymore.

So I ended up in Wal-Mart, one of my least favorite stores. If I had wanted to buy a girl's hat, I could have had chosen from dozens of Easter bonnets. There are always so many more choices in clothing for girls than for boys. And the girls' clothes are always nicer than the boys'. The boys' section looks drab in comparison. I was struck once again by the inequity.

I wandered around looking for boys' caps until I finally had to ask a salesperson, who showed me where they were cleverly hidden.

"Let's see," I said to the twins as I flipped through the rack. "Pokémon, Rugrats, Batman? Why can't they sell just plain caps?"

"How about this one, Mama?" Stephen asked, pointing to a Scooby Doo hat.

"I don't think so, honey." Finally I found a khaki cap with unobtrusive white lettering. It will have to do.

When I dropped Daniel off at school, his teacher showed me pictures of the class with Elmo and Rosita, two of the characters who are in a live Sesame Street show at the new arena. Daniel's class was invited to take part in a publicity shoot along with the mayor of the city and the county executive.

On Tuesday Daniel told me that his teacher had said that the characters were real. "But I saw the hole in the back where the costume goes on," he confided.

In the pictures I saw today, there a few candid shots in which Daniel was standing behind the characters, probably figuring out how the costume worked.

Good for him! I'm glad he's the kind of kid who won't just take his teacher's word but who wants to figure out things for himself.

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