This is my hat.

This is my hat, bought 25 years ago at a time when hats in Germany had to be tiny, whimsical, and useless or non-existent. I wanted something to shade my face, including chin, cheeks, nose, ears, and -yes- the eyes, so that I could forgo the sunscreen that caused blisters bigger and faster than the sunlight from which it was meant to protect me.

This hat was bought to serve, not as a fashion statement. It's made of thin black leather - cangaroo according to the tag attached to it, but I had no way to verify that and, frankly, I didn't care - with a springy wire in the brim so that it keeps its shape (more or less). It sees hat oil once in a blue moon. I got it as sun protection that worked with my allergies, but it also kept the rain -and occasional snow- off my face, and cooled my head (evaporation is magic for that. I started having a spray flask with water in my rucksack in summer, just for that). Its chin strap keeps my hair off my face and down my back. Upside down, it can be used as a basket (I once carried walnuts home in it when I found too many at once to fit in my pockets).

It also draws comments in downtown Germany, usually from guys with shirtless tees and skin the color of recently boiled lobsters, peeling away on their nose bridges. The comments are usually off by a continent (and 2.5 centuries), but they will suffer when they get home. I won't. The skin cancer in their future is a lot less likely in mine. When I get home, I will toss my 25-year-old hat on the sideboard in my hallway and continue my day. I will put it back on when I leave the house.

Once you have worn a hat that long, no other hat will do. They all turn out to be less: less comfortable, less well fitting, less... familiar. Now there are larger hats to be had in Germany, also for ladies. They’re made of straw or cloth, sometimes even of leather. They may be fashionably pretty, but they won't serve as well. And if they do, they either won't last long or will look like my 25-year-old one fast.

This hat was bought to serve, and it serves well.