Djelloul Marbrook

Have you ever noticed how things disappear right under our noses, and it isn’t always executive function disorder or Alzheimer’s; sometimes we get stuck in a time warp. Like whatever happened to doffing one’s cap, or fedora, or beret?

Some of us still remember how men used three fingers to lift their fedoras up in salute as they greeted you. They didn’t even have to know you. Now that was a different world, wasn’t it? And do you notice that baseball players still do it, but only when the manager tells them to take a bow.

I try to pay secret homage to those times in our not too distant past by smiling at friendly faces in the street. Most often people nod or smile, but sometimes they flinch or blink or look annoyed. So I have to steel myself to keep on doing it, because there’s as much discouragement out there as reward.

I never had the kind of head for fedoras. They always looked like something melted all over my head. I looked okay in woolen caps; they had a way of making me look like I knew what I was doing, feckless hope that that was. Ballcaps are handy these days for covering up my bald spot, but I miss the sky and get claustrophobic when I wear them. I tried wearing a keffiyeh once (that’s Lawrence of Arabia wearing one, inset), but it made me look like a Victorian candlestand, which, come to think of it, was an improvement. I was smart enough not to try on any turbans, because I was accustomed to the fathead in the mirror.

Besides, keffiyehs and turbans don’t come from cultures that doff the cap. And I remember fondly such scenes as a man doffing his fedora or boater while arresting a revolving door for a lady or holding an elevator door open. I remember men on the Third Avenue trolley doffing their hats to lovely passersby. Who can imagine a city like that today?

Actually I can, because I see gestural successors. I see young men, and not so young men, giving the thumbs up to pretty girls in business suits on roller blades. I see cockeyed sailor salutes between men and women wishing to acknowledge something fond or humorous. I see open palms signalling exclamation and pumping fists signalling triumph.

A different world, yes, but not a more indifferent one.