I say. My mother has just modeled the three hats she purchased for me at the mall. She’s still wearing the third one—an absurdly large Victorian tea hat covered with a heaping pile of red roses—along with a slightly deflated smile. “What do you mean? What’s wrong with this one?” “You look like Minnie Pearl.” “I do not.” The price tag is even dangling over the side of the brim. “Fine. You look crazy.” “I have one just like this I wear to my Red Hat events.” She takes the hat off her head and twists it around in her lap, admiring it from every angle. She then smells the fake flowers, returns it to her head, cocks it to the side, and smiles at me as if to say, What about now? Yup, it’s a hat made for a crazy lady. “You really didn’t get anything else?” She gives me an apologetic shrug instead of an answer and holds up the other two options—a brown leather cowboy hat and a neon-pink ski hat. “I felt rushed. It’s always chilly in here, so I thought the fleece hat would be good, and Bob has some country music CDs in the car, so I thought you might like that style.”
