Hat in the ring

 

 

     Do people even use the phrase "throw your hat in the ring" anymore? I imagine not, since they don't really wear hats anymore, not ritualistically, and those hats, more often than not, are some cheap fleece job, as opposed to something of quality and substance.
     That's what gave the phrase its meaning. To throw one's hat into the ring — sometimes quite literally, into a boxing ring — meant you were committing yourself to something. Why? Because your hat was there, in the ring, or wherever, and your hat was not only perhaps the most expensive thing you owned, but it had been chosen and molded and formed to match your personality. Where it went, you went, and vice versa.
     A month ago I was downtown, and stopped by Optimo Hats in the Monadnock Building for the pure joy of standing in the store, a glorious jewelry box of a place displaying hats that are luscious and finely crafted. The master was there, Graham Thompson, and we got to to talking. When I encounter people I automatically assume they don't know who I am, have never read anything I've ever written and don't care to start. But Graham actually read my book, "Hatless Jack" and remembered it — there aren't many books looking at men's hats as a socio-historical lens through which to understand culture. Just mine in fact.
     Did I know, he asked, that he had written a book. I did not. He bestowed one upon me, a lovely coffee table book. I began to read it — gorgeously written, an ode, not so much to hats, as to the lost art of craftsmanship, to appreciation of things of quality, increasingly rare in this mass-produced, use-it-once-and-throw-it-away world.
     I closed the book, excited to read it cover to cover. And then a month went by. Whatever I was doing, it wasn't reading Graham's book. Which is a lapse, on my part. So the purpose of this post is to throw my hat in the ring — I'm not going to let another month go by. As a book author, I know how frustrating it is, waiting for someone to read my damn book. So by ... Valentine's Day, I'll have it read and a column in the paper. Feel free to hold me to that and hound me if I don't. My apologies for the delay. I find sometimes the thing you want to do the most is the thing you never get around to doing.