The Chicago Typewriter was a model of 
The Man in the Yellow Hat
By Chicago Typewriter | April 6, 2010
I have an enormous head. When I say that, I don’t mean that metaphorically, like I’m conceited or self-centered; I mean I have a huge, freakish skull. It looks less and less disproportionate as I’ve aged and gained weight, but it’s still the largest head I’ve come across discounting 1) offensive linemen and 2) anything with hooves. This is not just my own personal hyperbole; I have the names and addresses of people who would be willing to testify in court that my noggin is the largest they’ve ever seen. Well, I don’t know for sure that they’d testify in court, and, actually, I’m kinda distracted trying to dream up a scenario in which head size would come into play.
“Your honor, the defendant could not have fit into that heating duct in order to steal the diamonds. From the neck down, yes, but not from the neck up. It was impossible that he committed that crime; let him go! Also, give him some money for his troubles. And a car.”
Where was I? Oh yeah, I have a giant head. I could never wear hats as a child, because the “one size fits all” term is just one in a long line of false marketing promises that have broken my heart (e.g. the Apple Newton, Star Wars I through III). In little league baseball, the batting helmets never fit me, so I would just balance them on my head like a poorly clipped yarmulke. In unrelated news, poorly clipped yarmulkes are terrible at protecting the head from fastballs. In more unrelated news, I lead the league in the “hit by pitch” (HBP) category for three years until my neurologist/dermatologist recommended I take up basketball.
As a consequence of lack of hats, I spent most of my high school years uncool. It is possible that the uncoolness may have had something to do with my membership in the Marching Band, the state championship in the Junior Engineering Technical Society, or the fact that my father purchased our deodorant in bulk from a grey-market discount store on Devon avenue (”Secret: strong enough for a man, pretty damn confusing for a teenage boy”). I always yearned for a hat with which A) to compensate for any unplanned absence of combs and hair gel, B) to turn backwards to symbolize my objection to authority, or C) to doff to symbolize my acceptance of authority or the presence of ladeez.
My chapeau-less state was fixed by an uncle who worked for Caterpillar. For those who are not aware, Caterpillar mesh trucker hats are humongous, designed to accommodate both the hat size found on your standard-issue trucker and for use in catching bluefin tuna. It was wonderful; I was able to wear a hat that fit me, that was unusual (bumping up my indie cred), and that was blue collar (bumping up a different sort of indie cred). He got me a new hat every year. Every year until college.
When I hit college, a confluence of factors consisting primarily of hipster culture, irony, and Ashton Kutcher made trucker hats trendy, in style, fashionable. Caterpillar responded to the increased demand by making their hats in human sizes, leaving me and my cetacean-headed brethren out in the cold. My uncle would pick up hats for me and they would cut off circulation to my brain with their tightness, and everyone knows that proper way to kill your brain cells is either with beer or by reading Heidegger. At the same time, a wonderful thing called “pornography” was invented at this time, and it was delivered to you through the medium of the internet. A side effect of the pornography-internet industry was the development of email, online bill payments, and electronic commerce; this new technology allowed specialized e-stores to flourish. Once such store was BigHeadCaps.com, which catered to the kind of gentlemen (and certain female comets) that need large hats. I select a baker’s dozen of the “large-dome, mesh, yellow” model, choosing yellow again to both maintain continuity with my old hats and to provide a bright color to alert potential predators of my unpleasant taste.
Thus, the hat I wear today.
***
Sadly, Big Head Caps no longer carries the yellow mesh cap. When I called to order my yearly refill of three hats, the woman on the other end said, “We don’t carry those anymore; if you want some you have to order a gross of them.”
Me: “What? Why?”
Her: “Well, only one guy ever bought ‘em, so it didn’t make sense for us to keep them in stock.”
Me: “That’s me! I was the one buying them!”
Her: “Oh, are you Mark?”
Have you ever been both flattered and enraged at the same time? Yeah, that’s what I felt.
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