Ideas are often best when they are stolen, with a different spin…. So I’m writing this today because I’m stealing my brother’s idea…. Shout out to Vince.
As a Chirico, we hold on to items, items that should be thrown away. For some reason I have an odd connection to those broken glasses that have been sitting in my desk for 3 years…. I know….. Yes, you got into a fight with an Aussie and that’s why they’re broken…. But does that really warrant you keeping them?
Well of course that item could be useful someday. Maybe an interesting conversation starter, maybe a retrofitted tool of some sort or maybe even a piece of art….. Yaaaaaa no. Chances are we should just chuck it out.
Chiricos don’t retire items that still have life left in them. We use them until they are obsolete, then hang them on the wall as an art piece. My grandfather did this with a trumpet that got run over 50 years ago…. A regular person would chuck these items out, but a Chirico would find a use for it in some way.
The item I’m going to talk about today is my flat cap. I’ve had this flat cap for about 5 years. It’s my travel cap, anytime I go for a trip I take it with me. Going to Mexico, I wear the flat cap. Going to the Philippines, I wear the flat cap, going to a bachelor party, I wear the flat cap. It almost symbolizes adventure like when I put that cap on, it’s go time.
The flat cap is nothing special, I believe it was made in China and somehow ended up in my hands in Australia. I was on my way to a horse race and needed a decent suit. While all my friends were buying their suits new, I rode my bicycle to a thrift store and found my flat cap and a decent suit for a decent price.
I got kicked out of the horse race in the flat cap…. with the guy in that photo…. I forget his name, but he was for sure a class act.
That photo is funny, because the hat is the only item I still have. I gave the suit to Nicholas, my brother when I was in Salt Lake City for an extravaganza. The watch is sitting at the bottom of a Colorado River just North of Silverthorne. It was a $400 Italian watch that I picked up in a random box that someone was throwing away. For some reason I had to wear it while on a camping trip. Some day I’ll learn…. And the shirt….. It was phased out of my wardrobe and used as a rag to clean my bicycle.
I hope I can wear my flat cap to more countries in the future. I hope I can put that thing on, grab a bag and take a flight to a place I’ve never been before. The idea of landing in a foreign city with no plan, a few hundred bucks and my flat cap just makes me smile.
That cap has collected six countries so far, and many more to come…. Unless I lose it of course, which is quite probable.
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