The Boy Who Wore His Hat in Church

The Boy Who Wore His Hat In Church
A Short Story
By Frank Sperry



I had been taught long before I made my first Communion that girls were supposed to wear a hat in Church, but boys never did. So that Sunday morning at Mass when I saw him across the aisle in church I pulled on my Mom’s sleeve to get her attention. She leaned down and I whispered “That boy over there is wearing a hat.”

At first I thought it might have been a girl but I didn’t think a girl would be wearing a Navy stocking cap pulled down to cover her ears. Besides I could see his other clothes, especially his shoes, and I was sure he was a boy. A boy wearing a hat in church was a mystery to me. I was curious. My Mom tried to get me to pay attention to the priest on the altar and not keep looking at the boy across the aisle. Still I couldn’t stop looking at the boy. I had seen the priest many times before but this was the first time I had ever seen a boy wearing a hat in church.

My Uncle Charlie had cancer and that made him lose all of his hair and he wore a hat whenever he went out of his house. My Mom had told me that my Uncle Charlie got mad at God and stopped going to church right after he got the cancer that made him lose his hair. I thought for a minute that maybe the boy across the aisle might have cancer like my Uncle Charlie had. But this boy looked to be about the same age as I was and I thought being seven was too young to have cancer.
When Mass was over my Mom started to leave the pew toward the end aisle but I tugged on her arm to go out the center aisle where the boy would leave.

The priest had come down from the altar and was walking up the center aisle to wait in the back of the church. He always went there after the Mass was over to shake hands with the people as they were leaving. The priest reached the boy’s pew, as he was about to leave. When the priest saw the boy with the hat at the end of the pew he reached out his left hand and laid it on the boy’s head and then made the sign of the cross over the boy’s head with his other hand. Then he continued up the aisle. When I saw the priest do that I wondered if he knew what the boy’s head looked like under his hat. Whatever it was the priest must have known it was something that needed to be blessed.

My Mom started to leave the pew and go up the left aisle, but I tugged on her sleeve to signal that I wanted to go up the center aisle where I could get a better look at the boy wearing the hat.

When we got to the center aisle the boy was standing right next to me and noticed me staring at him. Then he said “ Why do you want to know why I’m wearing a hat?”

I was both surprised and scared by his question. He seemed capable of looking inside of me and reading my mind. I wasn’t sure what to say but finally I answered him.

“It’s none of my business. I was just curious as to why the priest blessed your head.”
“Because the priest knows why I wear a hat.” He said

“It’s not really any of my business” I said again.
“What will you give me if I tell you?” he said.
My hand was in my pocket and I could feel the coins I usually put in the poor box on the way out of church. “I could give you the two quarters I was going to put in the poor box.”

We continued to talk even while we stood in line to shake hands with the priest.
About then my Mom heard me talking to the boy. She put her finger to her lips and gave me a Shush.

I was glad for the Shush because I wanted to end my conversation with the boy. I was getting irritated with him but he was not willing to break off our talk.

The lady who seemed to be the boy’s mother looked down at him just before she got to the priest and the boy got a Shush too.

The lady was holding the boy’s hand. When she got up to where the priest was standing, the priest leaned forward and whispered something in her ear.

I was standing right behind her but I couldn't hear what the priest had whispered. Whatever it was he didn’t want me to know. I was irritated with the priest. I was even more determined to know what I wanted to know. I thought about holding on to my poor box coins. Then when some poor family had to miss a meal, God could tell them it was the priest’s fault for whispering something when my own ear was that close.

The boy with the hat turned toward me and started to say something but before he could get a word past his lips I gave him a loud Shush. I was irritated with him more than the priest. He didn’t pay attention to my Shush instead he said “Give me something you have for something I have and I will tell you something you need to know.”

As if it was a command I could not resist. I took the money from my pocket and gave it to the boy. He took the coins and went straight over to the poor box and dropped them in.

When he came back in line I knew I had been tricked. “What did you do that for,” I said to him. I had to hold back from reaching out and pulling his hat off. “I gave you my money and you tricked me.”

He looked at me and said, “The money was not yours to give. It belonged to the poor.”
“It was mine to give to the poor. Not yours,” I told him.

He shot back “ What’s under my hat is mine to know. Not yours. You were willing to give away something that was not yours to get something that was none of your business.

When we got out to our car in the parking lot I asked my Mom, “Do the poor people know where the money comes from that goes in the poor box?”
“They know it comes from the church, of course,” she told me. “Is there anybody’s name attached to it” I asked again.

“No, just the name of the church,” She said.

On the way home in the car I felt better knowing that that boy with the hat would not get credit for something that I should have. Then I made a promise to myself that I would never wear a hat in church. Not even if I lost every hair on my head. I would stop going to church like my Uncle Charlie before I ever did that.