(Note: this was written yesterday, but I couldn’t post it until today). I own several red hats: one made of straw that I wear in summer, one that’s good any time of year when it rains, and one that I recently bought made of felt that I’ve been wearing now that the weather has turned colder.  Usually, no one remarks on my hat during the course of a day.

OK, there was that one time in the outdoor fruit and vegetable market where a woman referred to me in German as “Little Red Riding Hood”,  when she wanted to indicate who was next in line.

But that’s been the exception, not the rule.  Except today.

First, I was in a shop where I’ve gotten my photos printed in the past, for both my photography show last winter, as well as for a variety of other projects since there. The owner is also a photographer, and he been very helpful on many fronts over the past year. Since he knows I’m also a photographer, he’s never tried to sell me any of his photography services except for the printing services I’ve asked for.  However, today he commented on how nice I looked in my red hat, and that if I needed an informal portrait for my photography business website and/or brochures, I should let him take my portrait. I should note that I’ve been told by many people that here in Germany that people trust you as a self-employed business person if you have a photo of yourself on your card, your flyers, and your website. So the photography guy today was correct that at some point I will need to actually add that to my website, and I have in the past talked to him about advice on doing my own photography business here in Tübingen.

Anyway, as I said, he’s never tried to sell me photography services before, so I took it as a genuine compliment that he thought I looked good in the hat.

Later in the day I took the train to visit a friend in another little town near here. Usually she comes to Tübingen, and we go to a particular cafe here. Today, in her town, we wound up at a branch of that same cafe, since she wanted to see if I agreed that the coffee drinks were much better there than here (they are). The woman who waited on me, though, looked up and said, hey, I know you, you’re the women in the red hat from Tübingen! It turned out she normally works at the branch in Tübingen, but for reasons unknown (to me) she was working in this other branch today.

So, not only do I look good in the hat, I guess my fame in it is now is spreading…

Ah, but then we come to what I overhead a tiny child say to his mother while I was walking through the streets of Tübingen. He looked to be between 2-3 years old, no older. He was sitting in his stroller and looking around and caught sight of me. He then said to his mother, hey look, Mama,  there’s the (or maybe an)  Alte Tomaten.

Now, perhaps he was bi-lingual and mixing some Italian in there with the German, since while Tomaten is German for “tomato”, but  Alte in Italian would be “Tall”. So he could have been calling me a “tall tomato”.

But far more likely, of course, is that he was speaking only in German. Which means what he says translates to “Old Tomato.”

Hmmm.

However, I had to laugh. I recalled that earlier this week my brother-in-law reported what my 11-year-old nephew had explained to his almost-5-year-old brother. The question apparently was how old was the movie <em>The Wizard of Oz</em>.  And my 11-year-old nephew explained that it was old, “you know, like <em>30 years</em> old.”

30, eh? That’s definitely pretty old when you’re a kid — but not  bad when you’re an “old tomato.”  😉