Red Hat Ladies Scare Me

Red Hat Ladies Scare Me - Don't Get Me Started!

I know, I know, it's a wonderful thing that women of a certain age have found a kinship they can't find anywhere else. Consider it the Sisterhood of the Traveling Depends Pants or something (okay, just a little joke ladies, don't get mad, don't get all menopausal on my ass). The point is that I understand all the reasons this organization is a wonderful thing but when they all get together in a gaggle I can't help it. Red Hat ladies scare me - Don't Get Me Started!

As with most of my blogs - yes, this is something that I recently encountered. For the three of you who don't know who the red hat ladies are, I think it comes from a saying or verse (whatever you want to call it) that says something about "when I am an old woman, I will wear purple and a red hat." Well someone somewhere decided that instead of allowing it to stay as a Hallmark card or something you would see in the Lillian Vernon catalog made from resin, that they would actually make clubs to I guess wear purple and red hats. This phenomenon spread faster than syphilis and before you knew it there were clubs all over taking day trips and eventually, yes, a whole musical titled, "Hats" (God help us everyone)

I was walking down the street in Lake Tahoe recently looking in store windows, watching the passer-bys (Is people watching not the greatest thing in the world? As I'm writing this in the lobby of the hotel there is a gentleman sitting across from me who is in his late fifties or sixties and is in complete motorcycle leather clothing outfit on the phone ranting about how whatever it was that he needed was FedExed to his home 500 miles away instead of to the hotel. I would normally say that you shouldn't piss a guy like this off but I must tell that even with the tattoos and doo rag on his head I think I could take him as he looks old and feeble, you know sort of the Rolling Stones are looking lately) when suddenly there they were...Red Hat Ladies! I could tell they were coming not necessarily because of the hats at first but because of all the natural light catching their not so natural rhinestones all over them to the point where if I hadn't had the Prada sunglasses on I would have surely been blinded or at least ended up looking like Marty Feldman. It sort of looked as if the Quackers clothing brand lady, Jeanne from QVC - don't ask me how I know about her, I have nothing but useless information in my head - had thrown up on them. They were (as they always seem to me to be) in a group of four or so and all were huddling, chuckling and strutting their stuff for all that it was worth. As they got closer I could see that two of them actually had red hats on but the other two had obviously killed a feather boa as they both had a small tuft of marabou on their head held on there with what I can only assume was a bejeweled bobby pin. Come on ladies, that's not a hat, that's an attempt to look like a bird...well, a bird on the Muppets or something. Anyway, they were there on the street being really loud and just basically hogging the sidewalk when it occurred to me that they really aren't so much a philanthropic organization as a gang for old ladies. Picture if you will, instead of bandanas of a certain color their "blood colors" are their red hats. That's right, they have the same mentality of a gang - traveling in packs, taking over the sidewalks and dinner theatres (are there any left) across the country and they think just because they're old we're all going to step aside as they roll their purple scooter with the "rdhtldy" license plate over our feet in the grocery store without saying anything. Well, I'm saying something. You're a bunch of hoodlums and you need to be stopped or at the very least stay away from me because you scare me more than clowns or mimes (and that my friends is saying something).

Okay maybe I'm being a bit harsh but with women outliving men, my fear is that the Red Hat ladies will take over the entire world. If that happens we're all in trouble - think Kathy Bates in Fried Green Tomatoes with a red hat on. TAWANDA!!!! Is all you'll hear as you get knocked down by a gaggle of the "Reds" (as they're sure to become known) so don't you agree with me now? Red Hat ladies scare me - Don't Get Me Started!

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