coonskin cap

I’m thinking I should take up blogging, again. Some things seem too precious not to share.

Case in point: Yesterday, I saw a man in a coonskin cap. I wanted to laugh, but this guy wound up being the scariest-looking dude I’ve ever seen on the streets of Cambridge.

He was tough enough without the hat. For starters, he was real weathered-looking. Like a big mean sailor. Something about him conveyed (and quickly) that this gentleman had already “been there, done that” when it came to speedy resolution of conlicts. Pub fight, street fight, prison fight — check. Fists, beer bottles, butterfly knives — our man was clearly familiar with all the above.

And, as I have mentioned before, he was lumbering around Cambridge, England wearing a coonskin cap. Now, that’s a disconcerting choice of headgear on anyone, but here the effect was downright chilling.

I mean, where does one even procure such a thing? What haberdashery still stocks this item? The souvenier shop in Frontierland, for one, but that’s back in Anaheim, and I’m convinced this man had not been. He wasn’t the Magic Kingdom type, in so many words. Plus, his wasn’t a costume-shop racoon hat, it was gen-u-ine mammal. I think.

This was not a fashion statement. Nor an anachronistic affectation. This coonskip cap was, quite simply, one of Nature’s Little Warning Signs; a distinct cue for other members of the species (human and raccoon, in this case) to keep walking ahead, eyes fixed forward, never looking back.

Or laughing, either.