Saturday, July 14, 2007

“YOU HAVE TO GO TO THE BACK.”

The Mets owe me a goddamn baseball hat.

A few months ago, TBF and were wandering from the Lower East Side towards Washington Square Park when I said, “Oh, let’s go to the hat store.”
“The hat store?”
The Hat Store is the New Era store on E. 4th Street, made infamous now by the commercial. I had found it on my own a few months before that day, which I hadn’t shared with TBF. This time, we went into the store, and I took him to the back and showed him this lovely tricked-out black and grey paisley-and-sparkle, velvet cutout, Mets hat. More as a joke than anything, I tried it on.
“What do you think?”
TBF got that weird expression on his face. The one he gets when we walk by the Coach store and I see something new. The one right before his wallet comes out of his pocket.
I took the hat off quickly. “We’re going NOW,” I said.
“But I want to buy you the hat.”
“No.”
“If the Mets sweep this weekend, I’ll buy you the hat.”
For Mr. Purist, I-only-wear-blue-with-orange-button-fitted-hat to agree to buy me a non-regulation hat, it had to have looked pretty adorable.
I was in love. I wanted that hat.

The Mets, however, have not cooperated.

Which brings us to where we are now. The Mets have not swept anybody, but I am going to Chicago (and Milwaukee) in August to see the Mets, and TBF wants to buy me The Hat for the occasion, referring to it as my “Cliff Floyd ‘big pimpin’’ hat.” We each had errands in the neighborhood and around downtown today, so we agreed to meet at the hat store at 3:30.

We entered the store in search of the hat, only to discover a slight problem.
They don’t make that hat any more.
The paisley-and-sparkles, pseudo-velvet cutout Mets hat. It’s gone.

TBF is undeterred. He wants to buy me a hat. He starts perusing hats up and down the store. Every time he finds a model that would be suitable, we discover that they only have it for The Other New York Team, but not the Mets (but also for Atlanta, LA, the Orioles, Boston - wtf? Can I see this demographic data?)

After trying on and rejecting a hat I would later learn had a $80 price tag, I settled on this adorable number:

But am still cranky that the Mets cost me my paisley hat.

(Don’t worry. There’s plenty of other things the Mets are making me cranky over.)