This the hat that the server asked me to remove from the table. Red faced, I did. Who wants my cooties in their food? I should have known better. Yes, I should have known not to put my hat on the table; at my age, I should have known better, especially when this is not the first time it has happened. No, it wasn't. The first time was a long time ago but it was such a lesson that the embarrassing effects should have still been vibrating within my body sensibilities.
It happened in high school. Well, maybe I should set the background, first. I lived in a two-family house. The floor plan was a three bedroom flat. The one bathroom was small, containing a tub, basin, and toilet. A long narrow pantry with a sink was beside the bathroom. The other rooms were a kitchen and living room. But I want to focus on the pantry. Since the bathroom was used for baths and toilet duties in the family, the pantry sink was utilized to wash up, put make-up on, wash hair, set hair, shave, wash dishes, hand-wash clothes, etc. The bathroom couldn't be used for those needs because they would have prevented those from using the toilet.
You need to keep the pantry's uses in mind, for what happened to me in high school. My friend's family vacationed at Salisbury Beach. I was lucky enough to be invited for a week. One morning, after breakfast, we were getting ready to go swimming. I thought I'd put my hair up in a ponytail. So I put my hair elastic and hairbrush on the table, while I gathered my hair together. My friend's mother told me, "Don't put your hairbrush on the table. We don't want your hair in our food."
To this day, I am embarrassed that I didn't know this piece of common sense etiquette. But on the other hand, how could I have known? I washed and set my hair in a pantry filled with food. My father shaved there. I guess my family was just uncouth.
And yet, here I am fifty years later making the same mistake.
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