Sunday, January 25, 2009

Ha ha ha Eastern Market Man - You came crawling back!

In November, a guy sold me a hat at Eastern Market. Two weeks later, the chin strings broke, and I brought it back. I said "can you fix this?" and he said "umm... yeah, do you live around here? I'll bring it back tomorrow." I came back tomorrow, and he wasn't there. I thought "his English wasn't so great, maybe he meant next week. I'm pretty sure he only comes on Saturdays not Sundays." So I came back the next week, Saturday and Sunday. I came back the next week, and the next. No hat man. I left for holiday in cold, cold Pennsylvania, and I had no hat. I came back to DC, and it got cold, and I had no hat. Then, one fateful day (today), I went to Eastern Market to look for squash. I thought I'd take a breeze around the stalls, to look for my hat man. It had kind of become a habit, although now I wasn't even sure if I knew what he looked like.

There, on the other side of the market, was a guy who I thought might be my guy. Boy, did he look surprised to see me. When I asked him about my hat, he didn't even try to play dumb. He offered me another hat (they couldn't find the right material to match the old one and fix it) - it was a more expensive hat, but he guessed I could have it. You're dang right I can have it! You avoided me for 2 months, but my persistence won the day. You can't stay away from the Eastern Market and all its capitalistic promise... Victory is mine!!!