My Beanie Baby

My Beanie Baby

It was bound to happen... somehow I thought it might be some drunken frat rat at USC who took my kid’s beanie after he started college this fall.  As it turns out, it was probably a fellow concert-goer at a Waaves show that took place at the Del Mar Fairgrounds right after the horse races a few weeks ago.  What’s the big deal about a hat?  Plenty... 

My “kid” Nick is 18 years old, 6’4” tall, toothpick thin, with a fantastic mane of tangled red-brown hair that flows down to his waist.  When he was in 7th grade, he took to wearing a little pork pie fedora.  At that point, Nick’s hair was not yet touching his shoulders.  He started to be harassed on the bus riding to and from middle school -- for daring to express his individuality, wearing a hat and growing his hair (“You look like a girl!  Are you a girl?” and other such BS that adolescent boys sometimes say to anyone who dares to be at all different).  Nick didn’t like being picked on, but he was determined not to give in to peer pressure.  He had fallen in love with rock music and wanted to look the part of the musician he aspired to be.  He had begun to take drum lessons in elementary school and it awakened a sense of purpose in him.  He kept going to his drum lessons and tried to ignore the bullies on the bus.  Then some kid whose name he didn’t even know slammed his head into a table at school and everything started to go south.  Nick kept the hat on, but he hid in his room, feigned illness, balked at riding the bus, said he hated school.  He was in a bad place. This is the age when parents know their kid's future is at stake.  If they check out emotionally, you may never get them back on the path to health and happiness.

My husband and I knew something had to give.  We had to find a safe haven for this kid.  We found an amazing little independent boho school (and I do mean little: 135 kids TOTAL enrollment, grades 6-12) which was willing to take him with only 7 weeks left in the school year.  I told the headmaster that I needed Nick to be somewhere that he could feel safe being himself, and I thought that if this school stuck to their dress code and told Nick he could not wear his hat, that might be a deal breaker.  This kind man made an exception for my struggling son - the hat stayed... and so did Nick.

Over the summer before 8th grade started, Nick came upon a red and black buffalo plaid Billabong knit beanie at a surf shop near our home.  He decided this would be the basis of his new image.  He donned that beanie and never looked back.  It became his signature, his trademark.  He never took it off.  When I realized I would from time to time have to wash it while he slept, I decided to see if I could buy some back-up beanies, just in case - God forbid - something happened to Nick’s favored hat.  The surf shop had only one more of that same beanie left, so I bought that, then went online.  I had some vague inkling that this beanie was so central to Nick’s self-image that having extras might come in handy some day... I supposed that maybe I would stage a photo with a bunch of his friends all wearing the cap, something like that.  I just thought it would be a good idea to get more.  So I bought 10.  We now had a round dozen... that should be enough!

But as time went on, it became clear that none of the “back-up beanies” would ever be worn.  Nick attached some sort of magical powers to that original beanie.  It had been with him to some of the most important events in his life:  The Led Zeppelin reunion at the O2 in London, our 2-week family trip to Italy, 3 years at Grammy Camp, and covering the red carpet as the official Grammy teen reporter at the 2010 Grammy Awards... (backstage in the pressroom, Grammy host Stephen Colbert called on Nick with: "You, in the hat"!)  He was invited to be motion captured for one of the Guitar Hero games - and there’s his avatar, sporting the beanie. Nick drummed onstage at the El Rey theater in L.A. during a Grammy Camp showcase, and met countless famous musicians he admired, all while wearing his beanie. (Lucky kid had a dad in the business and got to see lots of shows from side stage). Nick became recognized by many of the rockstars he idolized as “the kid in the beanie” even if they didn’t know his name. 

As the years went on, Nick seemed to think that the hat carried some kind of karma... it was the keeper of his most treasured memories.  The more frayed and faded and snagged the cap got, the more Nick loved it.  This beanie had lived life with him. It was his lucky charm and his signature piece. It was both baby blankie and talisman. He could not leave the house unless that damn hat was on his head, and many mornings were spent with me yelling that it was time to leave for carpool while he raced around tearing apart his bedroom, looking for the beanie.  Once he had it on, all was right in the world.

And now the beanie is gone... whether it was actually snatched off Nick’s head or accidentally brushed off by another moshing teen, it doesn’t really matter.  Nick and his buddies looked on the ground and on other heads for it, but it was nowhere to be found.   They filed a late-night report at the fairgrounds Lost and Found, describing the beanie in detail -- sweetly naive to think someone would turn in a stretched out, discolored, unraveling hat. There are plenty of fans of his bands here in San Diego who might have wanted a keepsake of the wild-haired drummer -- maybe one of them was at that Waaves concert and took it for themselves.  Who knows? My belief is that the beanie either made its way into some knowing kid’s pocket or into the garbage after being found on the ground by the clean-up crew. 

Nick’s been mourning the loss of his “old friend” a bit, but he’s also been surprisingly OK... donning a new, never-worn duplicate beanie that was stored away in a drawer, as well as other hats here and there, but he’s also been going out bare-headed, with no cranial “armor” to speak of.  He’s becoming more and more OK with the idea of simply being NICK, not just the kid in the beanie.  Just in time for college... I guess it was time for a change.