"Damn! My Hat!"

Many years ago, before I knew any of you, when I was a completely different person than I am today, I lost my favorite hat. It was an Oingo Boingo baseball cap with this like, Latin American lizard design embroidered on it. That thing fit great and was well worn.

I put a hoop earring through the bill at one point and just left it there. I think I put it there just as a way to hold the earring, but it got left and I started giving insane and bullshit answers as to why it was there. Ultimately, it was a meaningless act that I ended up liking.

Well, imagine if you will, a twenty-two year old Billy in the back of pickup truck on the way to my first Grateful Dead show. The wind ripped the hat off my head and sent it in a slow-mo tumble under various automobiles traveling west along I-80.

I hadn’t thought about this hat in years, and then I remembered it strongly last night for some reason. I remember being pretty bummed as I watched that hat with an earring fly away, but then again it was just a hat.

But I got to thinking last night, that at that point in my life, almost to the day, my life was about to drastically change. And yeah, you can say that about any day – our lives change every moment – but check it out:

As I said, I was on my way to my first Grateful Dead show. This was an event that would effect me strongly and change my musical obsessions and concert going for years to come.

And I was mere days from moving from Chico to Santa Barbara, and what I couldn’t possibly know, and what perhaps that enigmatic I-80 that runs from the east coast all the way on in to my beloved San Francisco did know: Santa Barbara would only last 6 months for me before I high tailed it to the city by the bay.

My life in San Francisco changed me nearly to my core. I would fall in love with, and marry, the love of my life. I would meet an amazing collection of people that frankly feel more like family than friends. I would learn to trust myself more and respect myself more. San Francisco is a massive and massively important chapter in my life.

And maybe that pierced Oingo Boingo hat was a sacrifice for the entrance into this amazing adventure.