The Mysterious Hat

Yesterday, as part of my normal morning regimen, I punched a steel plate 1000 times to toughen the knuckles on the hand I use to kill people. Later that day I had planned on testing its effectiveness by visiting the town where I grew up and randomly felling cows with my fist-of-iron, but something ruined my plans.

I had just finished my 200 3-finger push-ups and was midway through my set of 300 hanging sit-ups when, on sit-up #138, I became aware of something amiss in my apartment. I have somewhat of a psychic bond with my home and I soon pinpointed the source of my stress. With all the grace of a cat, I swung down from the bar and investigated the object that was interfering with the feng shui of my abode.

It was a hat.

Oh, it looked innocent enough, casually resting on my leather sofa with built-in telephone, drink tray and massage function. A plain, black baseball cap with an adjustable band. The bill was curved and seemed well broken-in. The label inside the cap reads: made in Vietnam.

Here is the problem: I don't own this hat. It is not mine.

Absently I toweled the glistening sheen of sweat from my rippling muscles and sat down, turning the hat over and over in my hands and wondering from whence it came. I mentally ran through my own hat inventory. I have never been much of a hat wearer; I wear them when I don't feel like taking a shower in the morning and want to keep my unruly hair together for a trip to the coffee shop next door. Rarely do I put one on for any other reason. I own 3 baseball hats, two of which were bought for my recent trip to "One Happy Island", where I wore them to keep the sun from blistering my scalp through my thinning hair. The other one is a plain black baseball hat, much like the one I was considering, but it does not have an adjustable band. In fact it's a fitted hat, and it's too small for me (due to the huge size of my brain, no doubt).

So where did this hat come from?

I considered and dismissed my friends. Most, like me, didn't wear hats. Aside from that, none had been in my apartment in a long time, as getting an invitation to The Angry Piper's apartment is about as unlikely as finding a golden ticket in a Wonka bar. Nor would any be so foolish as to court death by arriving unannounced (I discourage drop-by visits. Oh, how I discourage them). Wherever the mysterious headwear had come from, I could be certain it wasn't from a friend.

Who else, then? Aside from my landlady, no one but myself has keys to my apartment, so I can rule out family (although my brother has been known to leave all kinds of shit here). My landlady is one of the coolest people I know. She doesn't wear baseball hats and she wouldn't just waltz through my apartment without a verifiable emergency and without telling me first (or as soon as possible afterwards), so I am confident the hat did not come from her.

Which leaves two possibilities. Three, if you count magic and/or divine providence. Either I brought the hat in myself or someone else did.

I didn't.

If someone else did, they gained access to my residence illegally and without my knowledge. They took nothing with them and left a hat.

Any ideas, anyone?

Disclaimer: Parts of this story may have been fictionalized. Not the hat, though. That's real.