My Arms Are Too Short Hats

It does not happen gradually, whatever anyone tells you. There is a specific evening — usually in a restaurant, usually with a menu — when you hold something at a normal distance and it is simply soft, and you move it away, and it resolves, and you understand that a threshold has been crossed and there is no going back. What follows is a period of denial with excellent internal logic. The lighting in here is bad. They print these smaller now. It is late, and eyes get tired. Every one of these is true and none of them is the reason. Eventually there are cheap readers in three rooms of the house and one permanently in the car, and the denial quietly ends. These hats belong to the person in the middle of that process and are worn with full self-awareness. The joke is on the wearer entirely, which is the most reliable and most wearable shape there is.