Straw Hat Survival

I told my Daughter In Law Elisa back when Benjamin was born, that as soon as he was old enough I was going to buy him a straw hat and bring him home with me, I have a lot of jobs around here that a young Grandson should be able to do.

Picking up pine cones, digging in Mimi’s flowerbeds, throwing those millions of rocks down from the hill so we can toss them back up, or learning from Papa how to catch those pesky gophers, as many of my longtime readers know I am quite the expert at catching gophers, Freeze Gopher proves this or maybe not.

At any rate running the family farm involves a good straw hat, so on our way to see the kids I couldn’t stop myself from getting one for Benjamin, Elisa didn’t let me bring him home but after spending a couple of weeks with him, I feel that this just may happen sooner than we realize.

When we first arrived shortly after the initial hugs and kisses, I took the hat out of the car, Benjamin grinned from ear to ear and promptly took to wearing his straw hat, whenever we were getting ready to go out, he would grab my hand and point to my hat and exclaim “Hat Papa Hat” then after my hat was positioned on my head he would run for his and yell “Hat Papa Hat” and I would place his on his head and off we would go.

This hat survived Fair Night, Zoo Day, the Mall, Boot shopping (a good straw hat needs a good pair of boots), Wally World, and falling to sleep, the thing that shows a two year old boy loves something is if it survives more than two hours, two weeks later this hat still looks new and he has worn it everyday.

I think Mimi may have gotten some of the credit for buying him the hat as she got more hugs and kisses than I did.

But in the end when he wanted to go out, it was Papa’s hat that was pointed to right before he grabbed his and we went for our walk.