Welcome back to “How Should I Know?”—the humorous advice column that is approximately 40% me trying to help people with their questions in a way that they’re not meshubad to actually follow my advice and 60% a way to get people to unwittingly send me topics.
Dear Mordechai,
How do I keep my hat in good condition for as long as possible? Hats are expensive.
-Y.S.
Well, think about it: Why is your Shabbos hat nicer than your weekday hat? Because you use it less. The problem is you.
So maybe don’t use it all the time. For example, I stopped bringing my weekday hat to Shacharis a while ago. Because if you think about it, I don’t actually wear it during Shacharis. Under my tallis, like a Shayne coat.
And you’re like, “Well, what about when you’re walking around on the street?” Well, I drive.
Here’s what I do if I wear my hat to Shacharis: I put on my hat, which I keep near the front door, and I walk the ten feet outside to my car. Then I have to take the hat off in the car because I can’t drive with it on, because it presses up against the ceiling, and every time I turn my head to check for traffic, the hat stays pointing forward, and then when I point my head forward again, the hat goes sideways.
So I can’t drive in a hat. Unless I get a convertible, and that will cause other hat problems. So I take it off. I throw it on the passenger seat for my son to immediately sit on, or I throw it in the back seat, and then the first time I hit the brakes, it slides to the floor of the car. And who knows what’s down there. Mostly food.
Then I pull up in front of the shul, and I get out of the car without the hat, reach into the back seat to get the hat off the floor, and I walk ten feet to the shul, and then I take the hat off and put it in the coat room so I could then try to find it again after shul, after everyone in the shul has picked it up and checked the name inside at least once. And then I put it on and repeat the process to get home. That seems like maybe a lot of unnecessary wear and tear for about 20 seconds of hat time.
So that’s my thought—don’t wear it to weekday Shacharis. (Unless you’re single, in which case you’re generally not paying for your own hat, so you don’t care.) This is good way to save money and keep your weekday hat presentable way after your Shabbos hat looks like it should be a weekday hat.
Don’t believe me that the problem is you? Look at the process of buying your hats. You go to the store and say, “I need a Shabbos hat and a weekday hat,” and the guy pulls out the first one and says, “This one is a Shabbos hat.” Do you think the people who made the hats had in mind, “L’kovod Shabbos Kodesh” for this one and not for the other one? Do you think they say, “And this one will be a weekday hat; we won’t make it as nice”? No, they don’t. Do you think it’s like shoes, where they make the weekday shoes so they stand up to more wear and tear? Do you think they’re adding extra reinforcement to weekday hats in the areas that maybe get extra stress, such as whatever thin piece of thread is keeping the lining from falling out? They definitely don’t. So what makes the first one the Shabbos hat?
You do.
They give you two hats, which might actually be identical, and soon enough, one will clearly be nicer than the other. In fact, every time I buy a Shabbos hat and a weekday hat at the same time, by the time I get home I forget which one he told me was which. I make a random call as to which one I think is nicer, and after maybe a week, that one is nicer.
A lot of people might say that a way to keep your hat nice is to keep it in a hat box. That’s great for Shabbos hats, but I think that shoving a hat into a hat box 2 or 3 times a day is not better for it than just keeping it on random surfaces. Unless you’re mostly worried about dust.
That said, I have no idea how to properly brush a hat anyway, because I feel like I’m just moving the dirt from one part of the hat to another, l’kovod Shabbos kodesh. I do it to make myself feel better, although not really, because it gives me the chills. That said, I don’t know when I’m supposed to brush a weekday hat. On Motzoei Shabbos for shalom bayis, instead of helping with the dishes?
When your wife wants to keep her sheitel nice, she puts it on a sheitel head. So maybe you should get those for your hats. Or just put them on her sheitel heads over her sheitels, so the heads look even more sinister when you’re trying to fall asleep.
And while you’re taking a cue from your wife and her sheitels, I’m not sure why people have just two hats—a Shabbos hat and a weekday hat. That’s a nice starter set when you’re first bar mitzvah, but anyone who’s been wearing hats for a while should have a Shabbos hat, a weekday hat, a rain hat, a hat for chasing down the street on a windy day, a hat that lives in the car, and a hat that lives in the shul coat room that you’re not longer sure is yours and you’re afraid to put on because of head lice.
Dear Mordechai,
Should I go vegan? I know someone who went vegan, and they won’t stop talking about it.
-P.K.
Unfortunately, that is one of the side effects of being a vegan. It’s like how people on a diet won’t stop talking about their diet. It doesn’t mean they’re happy; it means they’re starving for positive affirmation and also they need to keep their mouth moving.
I didn’t even know there were frum vegans, but apparently I have a neighbor who eats one piece of meat at each Shabbos seudah, for the mitzvah, and that’s it. Also, my brother-in-law went to a chasunah of someone he knows who married a vegan, and all the food there was vegan. Which is a little hypocritical, I think, because vegans come to a wedding and ask, “What’s the vegan option?” but you can’t go to their wedding and ask, “So what’s the meat option? Is there at least a milchig option? I’d be okay with a nice piece of salmon!” Though I guess that’s kind of like how you go on an airplane and expect there to be a kosher meal option, but if you have an all-kosher airline and a non-Jew gets on, they don’t ask, “Do you have a non-kosher option? No? What if I just mix the dairy meal and the meat meal, can I do that? I’m nothing if not flexible.”
So maybe we should cut them some slack. They can’t help it that they’re vegan.
But if you think about it, the whole bragging thing is weird. Imagine someone in your life bragging that he only eats pareve. And you ask, “Oh, like fish and eggs?” and he says, “No, not even that.”
And he says, “I’m always pareve. Can you imagine what an amazing life this is? I’m never fleishig!”
And you say, “Wait. The only reason people don’t want to be fleishig is that if they’re fleishig, they can’t eat milchigs. You can’t eat milchigs anyway! You’re always fleishig! Without the fun! What do you eat when you make a siyum?”
Though that’s a ridiculous question, because we only eat fleishigs if the siyum is during the Nine Days. I’ve never been to a fleishig siyum on Erev Pesach, for example. Hot dogs in buns grilled in the shul parking lot for breakfast.
“Have some! You’re a bechor! Would you rather fast?”
“I’m thinking about it!”
That might actually turn you vegan.
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Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia and is the author of seven books, published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send questions, comments, or ideas to MSchmutter@gmail.com. Read more of Mordechai Schmutter’s articles at 5TJT.com.
