"I had an old friend. Ron Haydon was his name. Grew rice, as most of us wound up doing back then. Not much to him, the sort of fellow you could easily lose in a crowd. But one day, Ron was on his way back from church and something blew across his path like a tumbleweed. It was a hat: a dusty, black bowler hat. Wasn’t really the style in our part of the country, not quite sure where it came from. But he found that it fit like a glove when he’d put it on and, well, now Ron Haydon had a new hat, didn’t he? Now you could pick Ron out in a crowd. He was the one with a bowler hat. After a time, you began to see Ron change. A bit more confident. A man not afraid to speak his mind during town meetings. Even managed to nab himself a bride after we’d all written him off as a bachelor farmer. It was as if he had been waiting this whole time for something to complete the picture. A centerpiece for the man he wished to be. Somehow, it was a hat that completed him. Odd, don’t you think? It does beg the question, what makes a man? How do we choose to be the one we present to the world? What is the centerpiece that sums up our parts?" -Zebulon Mucklewain, Midnight Burger
