(one) The Origin of the Lions Hat

(Part One) The Lions Hat


“When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one! There ought to be a book written about me, that there ought. And, when I grow up, I’ll write one-”

-Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll



(one) The Origin of the Lions Hat

For young boys, and maybe it's true for girls as well, there exists a time where everything that a boy posesses takes on a sort of talismanic power all its own. The child endows each and every object with a special and specific meaning. A baseball glove, for instance, has a whole regimen or ritual to its care and use. It must be purchased by the Male Role Model and given to the child in the initiation of the Mentor-Protege relationship. If the Male Role Model isn't going to take the time or has no intention of staying in Female Role Model's life long enough to transmit the game of baseball or even the simple pleasure of a game of catch to the receiver of the glove, he just shouldn't bother. Nothing aggravates a boy more than a glove and no ball, except a glove and a ball and no one to throw it to. Sure, there's always using the sloping roof of the house as readymade pitcher, but the act is not the soul benefit. If that were the case, everyone would masturbate and the Race would die out. No. The benefit is interaction with a fellow human. Just like sex. Sorta.

Anyway, there's a whole process to endowing the talisman. For the glove, it's the careful oiling, working of the creases, tying it up with the ball still in it so it breaks in just right. Few things reach this level, but when they do, they are guarded with the ferocity of a Doberman guarding her pups. The talisman must be protected from every source of ridicule or judgement. It must remain beyond reproach. If it doesn't, it loses its power and dies.

Thus enters the hat.

Jake, let's call him Jake, never had anything good. In 'good', I mean 'cool', 'neato', and ‘keen’, 'bomb-out', 'bitchin' or 'awesome'. He never had the flashy deep blue satin baseball jacket with "Tigers" written in orange script across the back. He never had the kick-ass Pony hightops with the fat laces untied flip-flopping down the hall to class like he was the King of the Freshman Class. He never had the Trapper Keeper with the Velcro Close with the picture of Billy Sims or Ken "The Snake" Stabler on the cover. The only thing remotely good he had was a beat up Lions stocking hat with the pom-pom ball missing.

To Jake, it was the Golden Fleece.

It was given to him, almost accidentally, by his father Big Jake. (This made Jake, Li'l Jake or J.R. not 'junior', never 'junior'.) Big Jake was every bit his name, large frame, barrel chest and thick peasant paws. His hair turned white around 1968, the year Li'l Jake was born. He did a cartwheel the day Li'l Jake was born; a full-blown cartwheel on the brown, nearly dead scrap of lawn in front of the grey shale and green trimmed bungalow he bought to shelter his large family. Thinking back now on the history of heart problems that were to strike him, nearly hobble him, less than ten years later, it was probably the last cartwheel he ever did.

He had two boys and two girls before Jake and apparently he wanted a boy to round out to an odd five. That meant seven people in a house that was built to sleep four. Anyone looking in on them would've thought they were Catholic by the size of the family, but Big Jake raised his kids laissez faire Northern Baptist. They were like Catholics without all the fun.

Jake nearly killed his mother coming into this world. Added to the fact that he was nearly a month late was that her diabetes hadn’t yet been diagnosed. Had the doctors known perhaps they could’ve done something. Maybe she would’ve talked it over with Big Jake and decided not to have the fifth kid. But, that was the way it happened. As it was, they nearly lost the poor babe when he didn’t breath for almost six minutes. Doctor said he’d probably have brain damage. They were surprised to find out he didn’t.

It was a very crisp biting Michigan October day, which meant 41º and blindingly sunny. Big Jake grabbed his son, waved good-bye to his wife and headed out to Meijer's Thrifty Acres to buy buttermilk, because it settled Mom's stomach, and a pound of ground beef. Right there Jake should've thought something was up, seeing that Big Jake always went to Farmer Jack's for the piddly shit like milk or coffee and held off going to M.T.A. until there was a list with more than five items. This was one of the many protocols that Big Jake had created so his life would work more simply.

"Besides", he had often told Jake, "No sense in being around that many people if it can be helped. The lower the number of shitheads you have to deal with the better".

Big Jake wasn't what you'd call a shopper. He was one of the many people that Free Market Economists hated; one that didn't hold up his end of the bargain when it came to browsing, impulse purchasing and the complete shopping experience. Big Jake was a buyer, plain and simple. Go in, find what you're looking for and get the hell outta Dodge.

This time he didn't.

He sent his son off to the toy aisle, something the boy's mother did often, while he ambled off vaguely in the direction of the meat department. This started Jake to worry. He was smarter than that to fall for such a ruse. He was probably smarter than his father, who hadn’t finish high school. Smarter than his brother and sisters, most of whom followed in the old man’s footsteps. Smarter than most of his friends, though in the end it did him no good because he had to “dumb down” in their presence. This knowledge hadn’t given him any advantage at all, for with the knowledge came paranoia. He had heard and read stories, myths really, about how this was the exactly way that all parents who didn't want their kids anymore got rid of them.

They abandon them in the supermarket or department store or mall, someplace big enough and filled with enough stuff to keep you occupied for a long time so you wouldn't know your dad and the rest of the family were tooling down the highway in a Winebago laughing their asses off about how they fooled that smart-mouthed little brat. Never liked him anyway. Serves him good.

Jake had read enough Roald Dahl books to know that when you're a ward of the state, an orphan, you have to eat bugs and trash and work 18 hour days and you're beaten every night so your exhaustion from work and crying acts as a sort of emotional Sominex; lulling you to sleep.

Jake, trembling with mild fright, headed for the toys.

It was a pity that Jake didn't know his Dad as well as other boys knew their dads. Of course, their Dads worked 9 to 5 not 7 to 6. They came home at lunch instead of eating in strange diners, served by women who were not his Mother. Jake's Dad, at least he thought so, was eating pie and drinking fresh-brewed coffee with strangers instead of chawing on another limp bologna sandwich and drinking expired milk in his instant coffee cause Mom was "resting."

Jake had wended his way through most of the toy aisle looking at stuff he'd never be like to own; Star Wars models, G. I. Joe dolls (the older big dolls with the "Kung Fu Grip" and the felt-like high-and-tight haircut not those lame 'action figures' they tried to pass off as the Real "Joe"), Commodore 64 computers and Atari 5200s. Jake was buzzing with a mix of the bright-eyed wonder of a burgeoning impulse consumer and the severe childhood depression that comes with the fact that he was born into a low social stratum. Okay, maybe it was more a combination of want/need/toylust and pragamatic sensibility. Maybe. He wandered to the end of an aisle that packed with rows of tiny green and orange plastic garbage cans filled with Slime and Slime with Worms, respectively. He turned to look back down the aisle before going on. That's when he saw his Dad.

He was talking with a large blonde woman wearing an oversized red vest and what looked like clown make-up. Jake squinted his eyes and made out that there was nametag pinned to her vest and that that was her actual carefully applied make-up. Big Jake turned, caught Jake in his field of vision and waved one of his patented 'nevermind' waves to the blonde as she visibly shrunk with the breaking off of the encounter with Big Jake.

Yes, Big Jake was handsome. Yes, he was an incorrigible flirt, with waitresses, stewardesses and in his later years, nurses. But, when it came down to the short hairs, he was loyal. Big Jake knew this. Jake's Mom knew this. The whole family knew it, but Jake.

Jake stood at the end of the aisle not knowing whether to wait there or start running. Jake really couldn't gauge his Dad. Was he mad? Of course not, he would've left your ass at the store and drove home without you. Well, if he wasn't mad, then what? As Big Jake padded down the aisle, Jake could see there was a barely visible smile forming on his face.

"Hey there, Little Fella. Gotcha something".

"What?" This came out of the boy's mouth like a poorly formed spitball; dropping sadly, hesitantly from his lips as if he had just gotten caught spitting it into the hair of the girl who sat in front of him in Miss Acker’s class.

"Close yer eyes".

He did. And, the fear tripled.

What the hell is he doing? Who is this guy and why did I agree to go to the store with him? He frightens me with his shenanigans. Did I just use the word she--

He felt something go over his head and stop at the speedbumps of his ears.

"Well, what do you think?"

Jake opened his eyes and looked for a bright shiny surface in which to see whatever was on his head. He stepped to the gleaming chrome upright of the racks that held the Slime. In it he made out a very sad, squashed face of a boy dwarfed by a Honolulu Blue and Silver stocking hat with a softball size pom-pom and a Honolulu Blue silhouette of a lion pouncing on an unseen prey. It was a Lions hat.

Jake turned back to his Dad.

"Can I keep it?"

This was question was more loaded than most people might think. You see, it played into Jake's propensity for wearing things around the store in case he saw anyone from school. This way, he could actually have the trappings of Cool without having to buy them. Occasionally, this habit would end up with some little older woman or snot-nosed stockboy following him around telling him: "You know you have to pay for that, you know"; adding the second 'you know' as an apparent attempt at a witty riposte. Also, kids he did see at the store would ask him the next day at school:

"Hey where's your Tigers jacket?"

And, he would have to think fast and say:

"My Mom won't let me wear it to school. She's afraid I'll get jumped"

This would probably be true in both cases. She wouldn't and he would.

Jake took the hat off and turned it in his hands. It was awesome. It was the coolest thing he'd ever seen, not because the Lions were great. No. They sucked shit through a straw. 2-14 last year. 4-12 the year before. No. It was because his Dad thought it was cool, too.

"Can't go through winter without a good winter hat. Your Mom'd probably buy you one with snowflakes or deer or some shit like that."

Jake laughed at this. He enjoyed profanity. He enjoyed it even more when someone who never used it, used it.

"Can't have you walking around school with snowmen on your head. You'd get the shit kicked outta ya." Big Jake busted out a deep, barrel-chested laugh and his eyes narrowed to slits. To Jake, he looked like the Santa Claus on the side of the 8 packs of Coke bottles during Christmas time; fat jolly and generous.

"Let's go", Big Jake spun Jake around with a guiding hand and marched him toward the check out.

The boy was beaming with pride, not because he had finally broken the surly bonds of Nerd to touch the face of Cool, but because he had just been a part of an act of love from his father. In that moment, he was both jubilant and ashamed, jubilant in the fact that he now was closer to his Male Role model, ashamed of all the things he thought about his father prior to the Giving of the Hat.

Although the Dodge Dart blasted toasty air from its vents into his face, Jake kept the hat on the whole way home; alternately taking it off to look at the pouncing blue King of the Beasts and putting it on and scrunching down to catch a glimpse of the hat in the passenger side mirror. They turned the corner on their block and Jake saw a couple of his friends standing in one of the front yards playing catch with a lime green Nerf football. They all watched the car trawl passed. As they did, Jake sat up straighter to show off his hat in its optimum coolness. Big Jake killed the engine in the street and coasted to a stop in the drive; a trick Li’l Jake always liked because it felt like that was what it must feel like to be on a sailboat with nothing but the power of the nature and physics propelling the vehicle. It drifted a few seconds and edged to a halt. Jake got out of the car slowly, cautiously, trying to contain the obvious glee at the tiny fingerhold the Lions hat gave him on the sheer face of the mountain of acceptance by the Cultural Vanguards.

The neighbor kids ran up to him to complement him on his hat. It was “cool”, “neato” and one leaned into his face and said in a low voice “kick-ass”. David Polks, who at the time was the neighborhood Fascist-In-Training, came slowly, methodically sauntering up to where the others were. He was of average height, his face was a bit drawn and his eyes narrow. He looked, for the most part, like he was in a position to judge everything; he was the sole arbiter of things acceptable. He was the Kommandant who sent you to the either the barracks or the showers. It was him they feared.

The other children waited patiently for him to ring down his judgment.

“Nice hat”, he said flatly so it could be taken in any combination of ways. This boy was already a master of manipulation. Later, if he so chose, he could deny his acceptance by saying he was ‘goofing’ and that he couldn’t believe they fell for it. Keeping his underlings guessing was only one of the ways, which he kept tight rein on his sway over them.

The kids nodded in vague agreement as they started to pass the Nerf around again.

“I’d lose the pom-pom, though. The seventh graders’ll kick yer ass for that”, he looked into Jake’s face for some reaction to what he said, but Jake threw up an uncustomary stony facade that took all the strength he could muster.

“Gimme the ball”, Herr Polks yelled to the others as he ran to join them.

You will not alter the talisman. It was given to you by your Father. You must and will respect its power.

Jake replayed the whole Giving episode in his head, like a flashback, while he tried desperately to calm himself.

With his face flushed and his head warm, he rushed to join the others in a loud and rowdy game of Smear the Queer.