Your Hat Will Find You.
Yesterday morning as I was getting ready to go to the YMCA for my thrice-weekly water pilates/aerobics program, I couldn't find my H&M hat. I looked everywhere in my posh pad...underneath two Sunday's worth of the Chicago Tribune, atop the air mattress temporarily parked in my living room and the jumble of white work-out socks, sneakers and wedgies on my hardwood floor.

It wasn't there, and it was mostly certainly not hanging from a hook on my coat rack, which is where I've hung the hat's colleagues.

So I had to think long and hard about just where this topper might be. Could it be in my Ruth's car? She gave me a ride after we made our customary fabric purchases (I got a multi-hued boucle knit for a work-related project and another remnant, but I cannot remember what it is).
How could I return to my home without a covering on my head? It seemed most impossible. I feel barren without my hats, particularly this one which I've personalized.

So I rang up Ruth and got her voicemail. "Ruth, did I by chance to leave my hat in your car last night?" I say. I replay the events of Monday night again. I sat down in the sewing machine department to hear Ace Seamstress Mac Berg's scintillating (and it really was. I took detailed notes) discussion of how to interface and line a jacket. I distinctly remember setting my chapeau down on a counter next to a sewing machine.

But I can't recall picking it up or even bringing it into the remnant room with me. How could I forget such an important accessory? Still the store is where the Hat Must Be. So I a jot down on my to-do list: Call Vogue.

Soon enough I'm answering calls and caught up in the merry world of Work. Later in the day the phone rings. I look on the caller I.D. It's Vogue. They must be calling about my hat!

Sure enough the business office has my precious possession. Later that day after I got caught up in what I needed to do in order to feel like a Productive Woman, I went to Vogue to reclaim my lost item. I felt Naked walking out the door without something on my noggin. Now, I could have worn one of my other H&M hats, but it made no sense to wear what I was going to be reclaiming. So I wore my oversized 1970s style sunglasses, smeared on some sunscreen and dodged Ms. Sun outside. Really, I put my hands up like I was try to avoid the papparazi and not this big yellow orb in the sky.

I manage to keep a goodly amount of UV rays at bay since it was late in the day (4 p.m.) and I made a beeline for my favorite store in the Whole Wide Universe. Naturally, I went straightaway to the business office to get my Baby back! I rang the bell. "I'm here to get my hat. It's right there," I tell the clerk, pointing to the black-straw wonder on top of other Lost Stuff.

It turned out Mac knew that was my hat and she had my phone number (must be on the lay-away slip for my serger). Now tell me how is it that my hat, which doesn't even have my name on it anywhere, can find me in a store where I regularly shop, but when I lose a hat with my name tag sewn into it at shopping mall I've only frequented twice, it's gone Forever? Don't people Google the names of people scribbled on shoes and sewn into mittens? I mean I found as much as I could about a certain military man, whose name was inscribed into a pair of 1940s white-cotton sailor pants I bought a few years ago. I learned where he was stationed but that was about it. Now there's a whole online database for WWII military. Perhaps if I looked today, I'd find out more about my man, and ultimately, his work attire. Unfortunately, I've donated this particular piece of apparel to the archives of a local college, and I cannot remember the sailor boy's name!

Do you ever try to find the owner of things lost in your home or business?