My lucky red hat...

All of us at one time or another have had our "blankey", that ugly dirty thing that was a charm or comfort totem.
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Mine was a red knit cap that I bought for a dollar in a gas station. I think I remember buying the thing when working as an electrician's helper. In those days becoming a helper was no more complicated than adopting a cat. It also paid as well as adopting a cat. We would gather at the bosses house and get our days assignment for the day and off we went to string wire in the morning and then go to a finish job in the afternoon. Summer time wasn't too bad, winter was another story. Have you ever hit your fingers with a hammer when they were so cold you had to wait to warm them up to bleed?
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It sucks swamp water.
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I was working with my future brother in laws. Bruce was a comical little troll, who tried to scare me one morning by almost rear ending a car, and swerved just in time to hit another car turning across our lane. He didn't see that one.
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He almost scared me to death. I came out of the seat in a ball, bent the dash with my knees and destroyed the wind shield with my head. The red hat didn't help.
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A new job taught me cool things like welding and grinding. How to saw asbestos with a sawzall, and line heat treat ovens. That one gives me nightmares. I came so close to dieing so many times there I can't count. One that made a real impression, and collected four stitches, was pulling a fly wheel off a punch press. The dudes who installed it were a little less than patient when fitting the key. The end result was a 20 ton porta power to remove the fly wheel. It slipped with about ten tons of load on it and I caught a one inch diameter threaded rod across the top of my head with a sound like breaking a ball bat.

Guess what I was wearing instead of a hard hat? (They ordered them while I was on the way to the ER).
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I was somewhat smaller than I am now and drove a Triumph Spitfire MKIV, probably the coolest car I have ever owned. It met it's demise one evening at the bumper of a 1965 Galaxy 500. It was my fault. When the dude hit me the car spun so violently I broke the passengers window with my head.
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Still wearing the red hat.
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I kept the hat for a long time, it was just something I wore because I had it.
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I sat down one night and counted all the scars and stitches I had accumulated while wearing the one dollar hat. When I was done and the total considered, I couldn't get it in the trash soon enough.
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Slow learner, that's me.