Counter Culture: Attack of the Red Hat Society

          I wasn’t sure I actually saw her. It was an early Sunday. I was already at work. Hallucinations happen this way.

          I was just standing there. That’s it. Just standing there. I was getting paid. So things were fine: no customers, no problems. I planned on writing poems all morning anyway.

          Then I saw an elderly woman, maybe in her sixties, hobbling through the mall. She wore a flamboyant, red hat and a dark purple dress.

I wasn’t sure I actually saw her. I mean, I’ve seen the birthday cards that say things like, “Another year older, another step closer to the red hat.” It was an over-the-hill gag. I didn’t think these women actually existed.

“Do you have a red or purple wig?” one of the two women in red hats and purple dresses said.

I was stiff with fear.

“I saw you earlier,” I said to the other woman. She wore large, thick glasses and white gloves. Curls of gray hair sprung from underneath her hat.

“I bet,” she said. “There’s a whole bunch of us here today.”

I wasn’t ready for this. I was just coping with the reality that these women were real. Now there was a whole fleet, in the mall, and for reasons I couldn’t understand, they were in my store.

Like leprechauns, the Chupacabra, and mermaids I thought these women were based in myth or folklore.

“Do you have a red or purple wig?” the more wrinkled of the two said again. She held a piece of paper in her hand. It had obviously been folded many times and I noted the similarities between the paper and her complexion.

“No,” I said. “We have afros though.”

“They’re not purple or red are they?”

“No, ma’am,” I said, looking them over. Little, hunched women in red and purple. They spoke with an air of dignity and condescension. Like they belonged to the Antebellum South and I was some shoeshine boy.

“How about a red or purple stuffed animal?” she said.

I looked over at our ‘stuffed animals’. South Park pillows, a talking Chucky doll and some kind of evil clown were all stuffed into a corner next to the incense. 

 “No,” I said. “We have afros though.”

“Thanks, hun,” the little woman with glasses said. “Don’t tell the others we were here.” The two of them, probably 120 years between them, walked out of the store with their shiny high heels and sparkling brooches.  

As soon as they made the turn and I couldn’t see them through the large store window I ran behind the counter.

I had one hour before my coworker started. I wasn’t ready for this. I wanted to write poems all morning and get stoned with my coworker all afternoon. Now I had to deal with menopausal women and their strange red and purple preferences.

Maybe they were muses, I thought. I’m supposed to write a poem about this. It all seemed very clear.

The theory died after ten minutes when all I could get down was The muse wears red and purple.

That had to be a metaphor for something.

Red and purple, we are closest to our own. I quickly scratched that out. I knew I stole it from somewhere. Just because I couldn’t remember where didn’t make it any less of a plagiarism.

I thought about life as a real shoeshine boy. The pay would be shit, but all you need is a few good tippers. I walked around the empty store and practiced my catchphrase in a cockney accent.

“Shine ya shoe, ma’am.” My accent was horrible and I knew there was no way I could score any kind of tip like that. I didn’t even own a pageboy hat.

“Shine ya shoe, ma’am,” I said again. This time it was louder and the accent sounded semi-authentic. Then I noticed a woman in a red and purple dress on the other side of the store.

How long had she been there? Did she hear my stupid impression? I wasn’t ready for this.

“Do you have a red or purple wig?” the woman said. I was still behind the counter and had no intention of leaving. The woman’s voice was kind and she read from a crumpled piece of paper she held close to her face.

“No,” I said. “We don’t have the stuffed animals either.”

“Oh,” she said, laughing. “Was somebody already here?”

“Yeah, about ten minutes ago,” I said. “They told me not to tell anyone.”

“They are such jokers,” she said, still laughing. She laughed all the way out the door and back into the mall. I figured she was high on prescription drugs and it made me wish my coworker would come in early. Yeah, the dope would help, but I needed somebody to witness this with me; somebody trapped with me, at the mercy of anybody who walked through the doorway. Plus, the dope would help.

Instead of my stoner buddy, a heavyset red hat lady came in and set a large, purple purse on the counter. The purse was made of some sort of denim material and covered with photo-pins of kids posing next to soccer balls and holding baseball bats.

“Hold on,” she said, as she dug through the over-sized bag. It could have been considered luggage.

“I’ve got this goddam scavenger hunt to deal with,” she said, as the flashing lights on the back wall lit up the red sequins on her hat.

I immediately liked her. Old women who curse remind me of my grandma. She’s a mouthy, Italian woman who has ruined store-bought spaghetti sauce for me.

“It’s no good, Adam,” she would tell me. “It’s just shit in a jar.”

The only difference between my own beloved grandma and these red-hat women is my grandma would be in church right now. And scavenger hunts weren’t good for my grandma either. She would just cheat.

“I hope yinz have some of this,” she said.

“We don’t have wigs or stuffed animals,” I said.

“Christ,” the woman huffed. Her dress was lighter than the other women’s. A white, floral print gave it a tropical feel. She handed me the paper.

I looked at the list: candles, picture frames, vases, shoes, spoons. Fucking spoons? The list was insane and we didn’t have most of the stuff she needed.

“We may have a picture frame,” I said and walked to the Play Boy section. There was a light red, almost pink, frame displaying no picture, but a sparkling bunny in one of the corners.

“That’s not red,” the lady said. “It’s pink.”

“Oh,” I said, looking the frame over. “It kind of looks red to me.”

“What the hell,” the lady said and wrote on her paper. “I didn’t even want to come in here. Might as well get something out of it.”

I smiled and shut up. That usually made people go away. I just stared at her, smiling. Eventually she thanked me and left.

I was alone for a little while after that. No red hat ladies. No real customers at all. The phone rang once. I couldn’t understand her at first. She spoke too quietly and the words seemed slurred.

“…and balloons.”

That’s all I heard. I had already asked her to repeat herself twice. I didn’t want to do that again, even though I’d repeated myself all day. 

“Balloons?” I said. “The only one’s we have are for bachelorette parties.”

“Are they red or purple?” she said with amazing clarity.

I felt duped, some rube barked down by a carney. 

“No, ma’am,” I said. “They are pink and have smiling penises on them.”

It was true and I was happy to be straightforward about it. Besides, she was taking a lazy approach to this whole scavenger hunt thing. At least the other red hat ladies physically walked into the store, osteoporosis and all.

The woman on the phone hung up. No “Goodbye.” No “Thank you.” Just a dial tone.

          Then I saw two teenaged girls walking around the store. I greeted them from behind the counter. I was glad to see young people.

          They were no older than 15. One girl was tall and thin, wearing a local high school’s purple tee shirt. The other girl, shorter and rounder, had her hair in tight pigtails and sported a pirate Johnny Depp on her shirt. They both walked over after I said hello.

          “Um, yes,” the tall, thin girl said. “Do you sell red candles?”

          I eyed the two of them suspiciously, focusing on the paper in the shorter girl’s hand.

          “You guys aren’t red hat ladies, are you?” I said. I hunched over, so I could look into their eyes, as my pointer finger drew circles in the air between us. They stepped back a little before they answered.

          “No,” the Johnny Depp girl said. “We’re just helping our grandma. She doesn’t want to come in here.”

          “I see,” I said. “Well you may as well see this.”

          I led them to the Play Boy picture frame. They didn’t need persuasion to know it was red. They just crossed it off the list.

          “What about a pin?” the girl with the purple tee shirt said. “I know you have pins here.”

          We did, and I was excited about it. All three of us walked over to the clear, hanging bins full of pins. I picked the whole thing up and dumped it on the counter. The two girls laughed, but their laughter held a sliver of nervousness. It was in the way they didn’t move their teeth.  

          “Here’s one,” the taller one said, holding up a purple pin that read “Scratch and Sniff” in green letters. The girl in the Johnny Depp shirt checked the list again.

          We walked around the store together after that. The girls also found red and purple keychains. They didn’t say much. It may have been because I wouldn’t shut up.

          “I’m glad you guys aren’t wearing red hats,” I said. “Me? I’m not a hat person, you know. Fucks your hair up for the rest of the day.”

          The girls chuckled, but I knew they wanted to leave.

          “I think you two had a clear advantage over all those women anyway,” I said. “I mean, you know what’s in here. These red hat ladies have no idea. Asking me for a stuffed animal. You know what kind of stuffed animals we have? A fucking killer clown.”                        

          I ripped the clown from his corner and waved it wildly in the air. The Johnny Depp girl screamed and hunkered behind her friend.

          “She hates clowns,” her friend said.

          “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just a stuffed animal. See.” I held out the clown for the girl to examine, but she wanted nothing to do with it. I saw her whisper something to her friend.

          They left soon after. I didn’t care. Even though it was only noon, I felt like I’d put a whole day of work in, helping those girls like I did. Their grandma would be proud, the envy of all the other scavenger hunters. I knew I could write a poem now. 

“Excuse me,” a voice called, making me look up from my paper. Two more red hat ladies. They both came to the register as I crumpled my third piece of paper into a ball.

I knew what they wanted. I felt like I’d been through this all before: women in red and purple asking for my help. I was some kind of guru midwife to them. An oracle, or some shit like that. I acknowledged them by spreading my hands open and nodding politely in their direction. I thought that would make me look wise.

“Yeah, anyway,” the first woman said. Her voice was direct and rough. She sounded like a gym teacher. “Where’s that Eye-talian restaurant in here?”

My poor, marinara sauce-making grandma would have cried if she heard this lady mispronounce us like that.

“I know where Italy is,” she would say. “But I ain’t ever heard of Eye-taly.” I kind of wished my grandma was here, behind the register with me. She would handle her contemporaries much better than I could. I was just some shoeshine boy to them. That distinction was there from the very beginning.

“I’m not sure,” I said. It was true. I didn’t know where anything was in this mall.

“What?” the woman said. Her friend, in the matching purple dress, had been silent the whole time, now she breathed loudly through her nose and spoke to her friend.

“Come on, May,” she said. “We’ll ask someone else.”

“There’s a mall directory right out there, I think,” I said.

“I bet,” May said. “I don’t understand how you can work here and not know where anything is.”

The attack was uncalled for. I wasn’t even sure how to defend myself.

“Sorry,” I said, pointing to a green doorway across from the store. “I just come in that door and out that door everyday. I don’t even know what’s in this mall.”

May was still not happy.

“That just confuses me. You work here, don’t you? It’s an Eye-talain place. We’re supposed to meet our friends there for lunch. It’s over by Macy’s.”

My grandma would have called her a dirty whore by now. I should have, too, but I couldn’t. I don’t know if it was an age thing: I should show her respect because she’s old and old people do and say crazy things. And somehow that’s okay. You get old, you get bitter.

Maybe I was functioning on some kind of working class instinct. The meaner this woman was, the more I wanted to help her. Part of me wanted to tell her off. Just unload the whole day on this four-foot grandma or great aunt, or whoever she was.

“I’m sorry,” I said, flopping my hands at my sides. “I just work here.”

They left saying something I didn’t pay attention to. It didn’t matter. I had six more hours before I could go home and I hadn’t written one good word the whole day.