I was hanging out with mama the other evening when I noticed an interesting straw chapeau. It was a rich coffee cream colour with a red trim and an elastic that one uses to strap around their chin. There is a dancing man carrying maracas drawn on to the back of it. He too wears the same hat: the sombrero.

I didn’t think anything of it until I went upstairs to read. Half an hour later, I came back down to make a cup of coffee and noticed that the sombrero had mysteriously disappeared. I searched high and low and considered that the dancing man had come to life, packed up and broke up with us…

Until mama came in from her garden, wearing the sombrero.

Not a little.
Not slightly.
But rather completely, with chin strap firmly beneath her chin.

“It keeps the sun out of my eyes.”
“It’s a sombrero.”
“It keeps the sun out of my eyes.”
“But. It’s a sombrero.”
“Yeeeee, ouf, Maha, who cares! It’s a hat.”
“No, mama — that, on your head, is a SOM-BRE-RO.”
“You think you’re so smart” were the words I heard as a set of sparkly maracas appeared in her hands and she danced her way out of the door and back to the garden.

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