It Was Four Dollars Hats

Thrifting is a hobby that disguises itself as shopping. The actual activity is closer to fishing: long stretches of nothing, a great deal of touching things you will not buy, and an occasional moment that justifies the entire afternoon and gets described to other people later in considerable detail. The price is not incidental — it is the whole score. Nobody who found something good secondhand has ever declined to say what it cost. The number is the point, offered immediately and unprompted, usually before the garment itself has been described. There is also the sizing, which is a work of historical fiction, and the stain, which is small, and the coat that does not fit anybody currently living in the house but was clearly not going to be left on the rack. These hats belong to the person doing the hunting, and the tone throughout is unrepentant. And it happens on a schedule you did not choose, to a timetable set by somebody else, in a process that has been the same for years and shows no sign of changing. That predictability is part of the comedy: nobody is surprised, everybody participates, and it comes around again regardless.