Emotional Support Water Bottle Hats

At some point in the last few years the water bottle stopped being equipment and became a dependent. It has a preferred spot in the car. It gets refilled before you leave, not when you arrive. If you get halfway down the road without it, you turn around — not because you are thirsty, but because the day has started wrong. The phrase people actually use for this is emotional support water bottle, and it is funny because it is accurate rather than exaggerated. The hydration is genuinely incidental. What the object provides is something to hold, something to fiddle with in a meeting, and a small daily ritual that costs nothing and asks nothing. Calling that emotional support is a joke that is only half a joke. These hats are worn by the person with the bottle, cheerfully admitting the whole thing. Nobody is being mocked — least of all the wearer, who is in on it completely. That is what makes it wearable: it is a confession delivered as a boast, which is the most reliable comic shape this catalogue has.