Lee has a hat. Well, he used to have it. It has long since unraveled and turned back into a pile a straw. But Lee had a straw hat that he wore all the time, no matter how battered and silly it looked.
There was a reason it was battered.
He spun it like a basketball.
Lee loved to play basketball, and in all our travels he made sure to carry his basketball with him. He played with a lot of kids in the street and he made a lot of kids laugh by demonstrating his amazing ability to spin it balanced on his finger.
But carrying a basketball everywhere you go, like to the grocery store or the little soda (local Costa Rican restaurant) was not very practical.
So he bought a straw hat.
And he learned how to spin it.
Well, one day we were walking down a narrow back street in Quepos, just off to nowhere-in-particular, and a skinny, old black man came along walking the other way. Lee was wearing his straw hat. The black man was also wearing a straw hat. In fact, he was wearing the exact same straw hat, probably purchased at the feria just like Lee's.
We said, "Hello!" and Lee pointed to both hats. Language barrier? When you speak charades fluently, there is no such thing.
The old man put his hand to his head, understanding that both he and Lee were wearing the same hat. His reaction was sweet—recognition dawning in his eyes and pleasure quickly spreading across his face.
But when Lee took his hat off his head and spun it on his finger-tip like a wobbly, tattered basketball, the old man slapped his knee and couldn’t stop laughing!