The reddest of hats for a red letter day

Beatrice ran and ran as fast as she could with her satchel bag bumping her thigh on every stride. I am going to get there, I am going to get there, I am going to get there. The thought ran through her mind like the train she was going to catch. Her right hand palm down and as though holding these thoughts in her head as it pressed her red hat into place. Firmly. On her good head on her broad shoulders. Sensible girl that she was.


Her hat was red letter day scarlet and would never be more apt. Because today was the day that she would meet her future. He was a man dressed in soiled overalls with dirt under his fingernails, a hard hat on his head and sheets of pencilled paper. He was going to teach her everything that she wanted to know, everything she needed to know and really dreamed of knowing, so that she could be an engineer. A real life and proper engineer. Who could make things, and build things, and imagine on the grandest scale there was until you reached Tower of Babel scale, which she would never do because she had no desire to build anything so unnecessarily phallic. Not that she knew the word phallic or much about the the object it described. But she just wouldn't do that. She wanted to build bridges and pull down walls.


Her mother thought she was going to secretarial school. Her father thought she was going to care for some other woman's children, and her sister knew all the thrilling details about the thrilling truth of the dream and it happening.



Her red hat was a stop sign. A stop to the life she could have led. So she could shift gears and live the one that she had always wanted. In a world of her very own creation in 1960's dreams.


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