Home is Where You Hang Your Hat
by ted2112, HSM team writer
Are you the kind of person who wears hats? I am, but wasn’t always. My favorite hat of all time is a green beat-up bucket hat that I bought on vacation many years ago to keep the sun off my head. Before this hat, I can honestly say I wasn’t much of a hat wearer, but there was something about this hat that I loved. Maybe I came to associate it with being at the beach, or maybe the hat had some magic powers like the one in that Frosty the Snowman song. But ether way I felt the hat somehow completed my residual self image, to steal a virtual term from the Matrix.
Over the years, the elements have turned that bucket hat from its original green to a kind of gray color. So, when I first signed up for Home it was only natural to go hat hunting. Much to my delight, I found the gray bucket hat for a mere ninety-nine cents! They didn’t have a green one, but that’s okay, the bucket hat from the Sony Original clothing line is a perfect color match for my real life hat — minus the stains from everyday life, mainly some off-coloring from putting out a small yet spreading campfire and a stubborn white salt ring around the brim due to the wind whisking it off my head while cruising on a boat. Yes, I did have to dive in to retrieve it.
The point is, I love this hat. Now, I’m not one of those people who wear a hat constantly. I try to be polite about it. I take it off in restaurants and indoors, but I did risk life and limb one summer’s day when while riding a roller coaster when I lost it yet again. I saw just where my favorite hat landed, and politely asked the ride attendant if I could get it. When I was refused, I had to take matters into my own hands and dodge oncoming coasters and outrun park security. Needless to say, I am no longer welcome in that amusement park. But I did manage to get my hat back.
The same is true for my gray bucket hat in Home. And without all the social hat wearing etiquette it has just become a part of me, and if I lost in on the Ferris Wheel in Pier Park or on the train ride in Acorn Park I’d do the same thing. I’d brave any glitch, and buy any locomotion items I needed, if it meant getting my hat back. Could I buy another one? Sure, but where’s the fun in that? Our on-line personae are a simple extension of ourselves, and as far as I’m concerned there is little difference between how I act in and out of Home. And the same is true for what I wear. Seeing my avatar without my hat just looks wrong, and playing Home has always been a fun and positive experience for me, so why change something that works?
That old expression, “home is where you hang your hat” rings powerfully true to me, because if you think about it, you wear your hat on your head and that’s just where four of our five senses are located. I’m not even sure what hairstyle I have on Home anymore, because I have rarely taken my bucket hat off in the several years since Home opened. So, to me how I perceive my world both virtual and real is from a head with a casual gray hat firmly attached to it.
Home is a hat lover’s paradise. There are tons of hats to sample and change up your look. Everything from the simple to the funny and extreme can be found, and as far as I’m concerned it’s a cheap and fun way to find your residual self image.
So hit the stores and check it out. Maybe you will be lucky enough to find the magic hat that just completes you!
October 20th, 2013 by ted2112 | 5 comments
ted2112 is a writer and a Bass player that has been both inspired and takes to heart Kurt Vonnegut words...."we are here on planet Earth to fart around, and don't let anyone tell you different."
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I know what you mean about residual self image. I can imagine my avatar with out my Namco boots, even though I would never wear boots like this for real, they just seem to complete my avatar.
great article! that grey hat is you and i can’t imagine you without it! I played another game where the characters could wear a hat and some of my friends always wore the same hat and when they took it off it just wasn’t them! In real life, I don’t look good in a hat and when I triedone on my Home avitar she didn’t look good either. Perhaps I need to keep searching the stores???
There are a ton of Hats on Home that I think are absolutely amazing if you can make them effective with certain fashion items and designs.
Good article. I love Hats (not necessarily the novel items) as it adds a fresh dynamic to any avatar instead of the trendy hairstyles you find on everyone, debuffing any sort of identity. A best friend of mine is quite known for his Viking Hat that he bought during the Fat Princess event on Home.
If they look good, I will wear them.
Cheers!
Great read, I love this one. Yes we get real comfy with what we wear. I’m a hat friendly person, namely caps, namely my old #18 Bobby LaBonte, Interstate Batteries NASCAR cap, but there’s no replica in Home for that, So my Strom wears the same hairstyle I started with in Home, default ponytail, and though I have tried other hairstyles, that is the one for me, and when I want to get back to the root basics…the Rohm Kota star wars armor. Keep the hat, it definitely is you, again, great article. Just a thought before I go…I bet that even if we all chipped in and bought you a brand spanking new hat, you never would wear it. Cheers to a fun read.