Arnold: Hi Harry!

Harry: Hey! Arnold! Welcome back to my tidy little hat store. How’s your grandpa doing?

Arnold: He’s good.

Harry: And Sid? He still got that green cap I sold him?

Arnold: Yep, he wears it every day.

Harry: Ah, that’s good.  Well what can I do for ya?

Arnold: Well Harry, I wanted to talk to you about the hats I buy.

Harry: Oh sure, Arnold. Why, I’ve been selling you the same blue hats since you were a day old. You’re one of my most loyal customers.

Arnold: Well thanks, Harry, but I need to talk to you about the hats. You see, there’s a problem. I don’t think these hats fit me very well. I think they’re too small.

Harry: Too small? Arnold that’s ridiculous! You love this hat! You’ve bought hundreds of them over the years!

Arnold: Yeah, well, I did that based on your recommendation. I’m realizing now that the hats may have caused some unwarranted side effects.

Harry: Arnold, what on Earth are you talking about? You’ve been wearing this hat every day of your life!

Arnold: That’s part of the problem, Harry. Since I hardly take the hat off, I think it’s the reason why my hair doesn’t grow in the front of my head. People look at me and assume I’m covering up a bald spot, but I’m in the fourth grade. I didn’t have male pattern baldness before I got the hat, and I doubt I’ve had it since. But with that hat there at all times, I’m not surprised that the small spot in the front of my head doesn’t have a single hair. I can’t help but start to think that the hat may be part of the problem.

Harry: It’s a hat, Arnold. It’s just a hat. It does what a hat does and nothing more.

Arnold: But that’s the other thing, it really doesn’t do what a hat does. A hat can protect a person’s head from getting wet in the rain, but my hat only protects a very small portion of my head. When it’s very sunny out, the hat doesn’t provide my any shade. When I briefly took it off after tanning at the beach on a sunny dad, I had a small, white, circular tan line on my forehead. It looked like I got a face tattoo of a golf ball.

Harry: Well good thing you could cover that tan line with the hat!

Arnold: Harry, this isn’t working out.

Harry: What are you trying to say, what do you want from me, Arnold?

Arnold: Well Harry, I’d like to try a larger blue hat.

Harry: We don’t have any larger blue hats. That’s the biggest one we’ve got.

Arnold: You’ve sold hundreds of larger blue hats to my friend Harold. He has a hat that covers his entire head.

Harry: …

Arnold: Harry, please tell me what the hell is going on.

Harry: I hate that it’s come to this, but it’s time you knew the truth. You have a football shaped head.

Arnold: Um, okay?

Harry: No Arnold, not okay. You have a football shaped head. I spent years trying to craft a hat that could fit your head without making you look like a freak. Remember those 10 months in 1998 when I closed the shop? I was studying with a priest in Malaysia who was world-renowned for his ability to make hats for odd-shaped heads. Even he couldn’t figure this one out, so he gave up his life as a hatter and opened a model train store in Kansas City. I spent another 8 weeks in therapy at the Hatters Alliance, and they had no idea how to help me. You have a football shaped head, Arnold, and it’s killing me.

Arnold: Hmm, you know, the kids at school always call me Football Head – they like to make jokes about stuff like that, but I never really took any notice of it. I never really thought about how that affected my ability to buy hats. I must be a hatter’s worst nightmare.

Harry: You’re to the hatting industry what Wolverine was to the mitten industry. Your tiny blue hat is a victim, like all of those unfortunate, slashed mittens.

Arnold: Wow. So what can I do now? I’ve got this hair that never learned to grow in correctly and a hat that’s too small for my head.

Harry: The way I see it, you have three options.  You can shave your head, go for a Bruce Willis look. You could keep wearing the hat and just ignore the flaws. Or, you can slice open a football, spray paint it blue, and wear it like a bathing cap.

Arnold: Well thanks, Harry. I’ve got to head over to Gerald’s house. I think he still has my football.