The Thinking Cap

Generally, I go ‘round without a hat. A hat squeezes the head, itches the scalp. Plus, I like my hair. But we live in interesting, challenging, new times. We must rise to the occasion. Sometimes, to meet the moment, a man needs a hat.

Not just any hat.

I mean, can you just don a sombrero or a baseball cap or a bowler and expect different results? Can you just grab a beret or a tricorn or the bucket hat my daughter’s been begging for – and voila? I don’t know. I’ve never grabbed a tricorn. We don’t just need any hat. We need the right hat.

That’s why, for this moment in time, I recommend a tin foil hat.

Tin foil was first seen in the 1800s. Then it became commercially available by the early 1900s. Not long after, a Great Man looked at this world saw something—not war or hunger or injustice. He saw: mind control. And he said: This. This is the real issue.

A Great Man understood if tin could keep something warm/or cold, it could keep mind control out. His solution was as elegant as it was poetic. He would give the world a hat.

Mind control is bad. There. I said it. Someone else controlling your mind might make you do crazy things—like the chicken dance, or the macarena, or any kind of dance. If an alien controlled your mind, they might learn all your secrets, like where you put your backup car keys. If I controlled your mind… I’d make you stop looking at your phone while driving.

But you will not accept mind control. You’re your own man. You’re the kind of guy who makes sure everyone knows you were into Pickleball before it was cool. You’re the kind of guy who slips into the driver’s seat and says: “Let’s rock and roll.” You’re the kind of guy who saddles up to the bar at TGIFridays and, when they ask if they can set you up with the usual, you say: “Not today, Bob. Not today.”

You’re a true original.

You’re not going to be pushed into the middle of the pack by aliens or the government or Bill Gates. You will stay the course. If it means wearing a tin foil hat…

Others may point, gasp, laugh. This is par for the course. They pointed at The Wright Brothers. They gasped at Galileo, I’m told. They laughed at the stand-up comedian who entertained audiences by smashing fruit onto them. Let them laugh. Let them.

Once you commit to the tin foil hat, decisions must be made. If beanie… then propellor? If top pointy—how tall? Finally, maybe a brim, you know, for sun?

With reluctant help from The Wife, I have a personalized, tall, pointy tin foil hat fastened to my head. It’s quite light and not nearly as itchy as I thought. My six-year-old says I look like a unicorn. To test the efficacy, I asked ChatGPT to try to control my mind. As soon as I renewed my annual subscription, ChatGPT gleefully attempted to control my mind. Oh, how it tried! Effortlessly I remained my very own man. I was so impressed that I went ahead and renewed for another five years.

I sat there thinking about how smart I was, how independent, the very symbol of free will—all thanks to a little tin. Then, after dinner, when I wasn’t looking, The Wife put our leftovers in my tin foil hat. I immediately grabbed the box to make another and noticed my hat of tin was, in fact, a hat of aluminum. Apparently, they don’t make foil out of tin anymore. Tin hats have been aluminum… for over a century. Which means I will need another hat. In comedy we call this putting a hat on a hat. In comedy, that’s bad. In life… I guess we’ll see.

Perez.pdf

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Beyond Reason

by Rob Perez