tubbytwoshoes
a hatty mistake
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.–Albert Einstein
In college, she studied quantum physics with a minor in chapeaumillinbrero — the philosophy of all things pertaining to hats. Physics, because her father expected her to follow in his footsteps, and she lacked the courage to defy him. Chapeaumillinbrero, because she liked way the word rolled off her tongue and looked on the page, and because it seemed to her the very opposite of physics — essentially illogical and superfluous. While physics aimed to prove that nothing was real unless it was observed, a hat was a hat — the course catalog promised — even when merely imagined.
In her first class in chapeaumillinbrero, this theory was tested when the professor placed in the center of his desk, a small hatbox with a fitted lid. “Become the hat,†he intoned, sounding eerily like the robot-man who lived in her car’s GPS system. “May we see it, please?†someone dared to inquire. “Of course not,” chastised the professor. “Become the hat. That is all.”
And she tried. She really did. She imagined a gangster’s felt fedora. The mink hat of a Russian Cossack. A hat made of paper. A newsboy’s cap, tweedy yet flirtatious. In her mind, she conjured a hat, and channeled all the great hat wearers — Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, her stylish Aunt Jane. But it was no use. She could not become the hat.
A single experiment had proved her wrong. Einstein was right. She was, in fact, a physicist, and the maker of a hatty (but happy) mistake.
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