The end of an era.

It was a sad day in the world of hat watch. The cap finally came off, revealing a head of hair, gray and cropped. Where was the vortex? Had it closed, with the closing of the month of February? The world may never know. The final act of the vortex seems to have been a cold, sporadic rain, which inconvenienced everyone, not least of all the delegate from Libya, since he had nothing with which to cover his head.

News of the hat’s non-presence was whispered about in the labs, but no one dared mention it but in hushed tones. No one, that is, except for the Queen of Social Interaction, whose dominion is the awkwardness that follows a failed joke at your expense. The Queen came to the office of the delegate from Libya (which happens to be within hearing range of the PRL delegate), and announced to him "Everyone said you looked different today, and I guess that's because you're not wearing your HAAAAT!" Sometimes, to get her royal highness’ point across, she uses overemphasis of important words. The Queen, she is very subtle. "They said maybe you got a haircut or something, but I think they all got so used to seeing your HAAAT that they forgot it was even there!" It is important to increase paranoia by letting someone know that people are talking about them behind their back.

The reply was muffled, as the delegate from Libya felt no need to emphasize his words, and the PRL delegate was able to hear only snippets—that he had suffered a bad haircut two weeks prior, and that the burden of wearing the hat was so great that he wished he had never put it on. Also, the hat is in the wash, and he hopes it doesn’t shrink in the dryer.

It would be easy to put the whole episode off as an effort to hide a bad haircut, but the presence of the hat predates the alleged haircut. Did the vortex allow him to predict the unsatisfactory coiffure? Or did it alter his perception of time, so that the delegate from Libya does not remember the first half of the month? Either of these scenarios is alarming. Not nearly as alarming, however, as the revelation that the closing of the vortex caused such a mess as to require laundering of the hat.

We should all be thankful that the burden has been lifted from the Libyan delegate’s diminutive shoulders (and noggin), and that he single-handedly (headedly) protected the world from trans-dimensional annihilation.