Fair to Middling Confusion

The man in the hat met the shamble leg man who had just met the alms man who had been visiting with the harridan and her sister. They decided to meet in the near to middling future over canapés and malt-liquor, each with a story to tell the others. They decided in advance to each wear a different hat, thereby cutting down on the confusion of differentiating one from the other. If they all wore the same hat (identical stitching and tatting) they would surely miss one another, simply passing each other by in the street or on the sideways beside the Waymart across for the Sears next to the aqueduct, where they had met once before, each wearing identical hats. Whatever headwear they chose, toques, boaters, Stetsons etc. would be of little to middling concern, as all hats cover the most impartial part of the body, the head, making an objective unbiased identification all but impossible. (He asked ‘why all the italics’? To which he replied ‘fuck off and get your own identifying mark!’)