The Mom Hat

This is me today at the pool, wearing what my lovely, sweet, horrible little daughters refer to as my Mom Hat.

I wear this hat because my hair has just about as much processed color as Helen Thomas's, and she is the only nearly-ninety-year old person I have ever seen who still has thirty-year old hair. I do not want my hair to get fried by the sun and I do not want it to turn a funny color (most likely either greenish or a really horrible brassy color that I associate, for some reason, with Bonnie Parker. I also don't want any sun on my face, which will lead to my having age spots. Or to put a finer point on it, more age spots than I already have. Because, when I was seventeen? I was all about the Hawaiian Tropics and very, very little about the "you're going to regret this when you're in your forties."

So as soon as I claim a bench to sit on, I unpack my swim bag and my Mom Hat is the first thing I pull out. I put it on my head and pull it low on my brow, right down to the tops of my huge Jackie Onassis sunglasses. This not only keeps me shaded as to skin and unfried as to hair, but also allows me to stare at people quite frankly without them knowing that I'm doing so; I'm going to write a public service announcement here very shortly about women and girls who wear low-rise shorts or jeans and then bend over or squat down and give everyone that money shot look at their butt cracks.

I never really considered my sage green straw hat with black grosgrain trim a Mom Hat until the girls informed me that this was indeed the case. I thought of it as....jaunty. I got it about a thousand years ago on St. Maarten, where I purchased it to give me shelter from all those obnoxious street hucksters who kept trying to get me to braid my hair, buy some gold and drink some tequila, not necessarily in that order. And if you've ever been to St. Maarten, you know exactly what I'm talking about, which is the reason why I would balk at ever going back: I'll just stay aboard the ship, thanks.

So I was a bit crestfallen at hearing that my hat, which also can be worn with the brim turned up in kind of a Mad Hatter style, was a Mom Hat. But I wasn't truly bummed out until Meelyn and Aisling informed me that those pink flip-flops I wear? Well, those aren't just Mom Flip-Flops.

Those are full-on GRANDMA flip-flops.