Let me tell you about my best u$d 3.00 purchase ever. My Man Hat. As you may have guessed from the name, it is a hat. But it is a multitalented hat. It is a black knit hat which does a somewhat-better-than-fair job of keeping my head warm. It is also a little long so that at night when I am in my sleeping bag, I pull the sleeping bag up to my lips and I pull my Man Hat down to cover everything down to the tip of my nose leaving just my nostrils exposed (sexy, no?). Also, wearing my Man Hat would significantly increase my chances at being in a rap video. And, should I decide to dread my hair, it will make an excellent starter nasty-hair bag hat. However, we have not yet discussed its most important quality, the quality for which it is named – its manness.
Reactions to me have changed as I’ve been traveling. In Buenos Aires, people either talked to me, glanced at me and looked away, or if they were selling something touristy they looked at me hopefully. Clearly, I am foreign. In the lake district – from San Martin de los Andes to Bariloche, the locals looked a little longer. They are very accustomed to tourists – but usually tourists from Buenos Aires with an occasional foreigner mixed in. 
Driving across the width of Patagonia, through the nothingness and the occasional small town without a gas station and with one paved road – maybe – where pigs and horses roamed the streets – the locals stared. I drove around some of the neighborhoods of these small towns and entire groups of children stopped playing futbol to stare at me as I went by. Not smiling. Not glancing. Just open mouthed staring. In Esquel, a toddler who was being carried on his mother’s hip not only stared, but pointed and said something. I was standing still and the mother was walking passed me, so as they passed the toddler kept his little toddler arm outstretched the entire time with one tiny toddler finger extended until they reached the end of the block, crossed the street, and finally disappeared around a corner.
Along the coast to Puerto Deseado, when I parked on the side of the road for a picture and got out of my car, other cars honked at me. Not just one honk. No. It was “honk, honk, honk…….honk, honk, honk” until they had passed. At first, I thought maybe something was wrong with my car, or maybe they were telling me my lights were off, or maybe I shouldn’t be on the side of the road. But eventually I realized- it was my yellow hair getting the honks. I hated it. The road along the coast is busy, so I’d have four or five cars all honking at me any time I stopped. That’s when the potential of the Man Hat occurred to me. The next time I stopped, I put on the hat, tucked all of my blonde “hey-look-a-foreigner” hair underneath it, stepped out of the car and into …..silence. Anonymity. Bliss. And, from that point on, I wore the hat nearly constantly. With my giantess stature, my loose baggy ripped jeans, my many layers of shirts and pullovers against the cold, and my wonderful Man Hat, I became anonymous. From a distance, I looked like a boy. When I walked into stores or passed people on the street, they still looked. My skin is too light to fit in outside of Buenos Aires, but without the blonde hair that is just screaming to everyone that I’m not from here, people have stopped staring. It’s wonderful.
When I was in college and just out of college, I dyed my shoulder length hair pink. Bright pink. Then orange. Then blue. Way back in those days (boy am I old), it was a shocking thing to do. I got a lot of comments. A pair of little old ladies stopped me on the street to say, “Honey, you’d be so pretty if only you didn’t do that to yourself.” As I was walking down the street in Denver, a bus driver pulled over an entire bus load of people, opened the bus doors and shouted, “Exactly what shade of blue is that?” A grungy 20-something asked me in the street, “If I follow you home, will you beat me like the dog I am?” What?? 
I got a lot of comments. I still maintain that dying my hair was one of the most important decisions I’ve ever made because having pink hair made me come out of my shy, avoid all human contact position and deal with other people. There was no hiding in conservative South Carolina with bright pink hair. That’s not why I did it, though. It wasn’t a rebellion. It wasn’t a political statement. I just thought it was pretty. I still do. I like color.
Having lived in SC with pink hair, you’d think I should be okay with standing out, but the blonde-hair-honking was different. Dying my hair pink, I was in a place where I fit in all the ways that mattered – I could communicate. I shared an American background. I knew the community where I lived. In Argentina, I don’t belong in the ways that are important. I can’t speak. I don’t understand the conversations around me. And it is obvious that I don’t fit in to anyone who takes the briefest glance at me. I am clearly a loner, easily picked out, and maybe easily picked off. There was no way to be one of the crowd. Until my small black knit savior. God save the queen, and the Man Hat.
I have been avoiding writing this post. I don’t have a funny story. I don’t have any clever dialog. I can’t bubble over with exuberance or culture shock. I don’t want to write this post because I don’t know how. How can I convey a sense of complete peace?
