Getting Into and Out of Tassels

If you had a mother, a grandmother, an aunt, a sister, a half-brother you worried about a little bit, a neighbor?knew anyone at all who knitted?and you lived in a cold climate?you'll know what I'm talking about. n It all started one recent chilly afternoon when Morgan and I were sitting in a tavern. She saw someone walk past the window wearing a knit cap with a big, goofy tassel on top.

This, of course, got us to talking about tassels. Now, Morgan informed me that "pom-pom" was the more appropriate term out here on the East Coast. That name makes more sense, I guess. Much more. It sounds funnier, and it's more humiliating to talk about. I even remember having heard it used occasionally as a child in Wisconsin?but I always knew those things as "tassels," so, even though that in itself means something else out here, that's the term I knew, so that's the one I'm going to use. We're all just going to have to learn to live with it for the next few minutes. We all know what we're talking about.

If you knew a knitter when you were growing up, you were doomed. People who knit always knit caps. They simply can't help themselves. I guess they're easier than sweaters. And if (or rather, when) they knitted caps, they'd inevitably add a nice tassel on the top. A little flourish. They couldn't help themselves with that, either. Every single homemade knit cap came complete with a tassel.

Tassels came in various sizes?from little marble-sized things (which are okay?you can ignore those, or even turn the cap inside out to hide it without too much trouble) to enormous, drooping monstrosities that leave you looking like you're balancing a fluffy pineapple or some sort of small, chubby mammal on your head.

Those were the worst, those big ones, although anything bigger than marble-sized was pretty bad. Morgan and I, sitting at that bar, couldn't for the life of us figure out what the deal was with those things. What were these knitters thinking? Was it a handy-dandy way to deal with those leftover strands of yarn when you were done? Was it something you had to do? Who along the line decided that wearing a big poofy ball of yarn snippets on top of your head was a good and attractive thing?

Whatever sorts of excuses these knitters made?and continue to make?for themselves, tassels were just bad news for the kids who were forced to wear them.

First of all, they made you look like a doofus, and everyone let you know as much. And second, it provided an easy handle for those people who were of a mind to snatch your cap off your head and play keep-away with it. Beyond that, hell, tassels got snagged in trees and on bushes, even made it hard sometimes to get through doorways.

I was always tempted to stuff these caps into my coat pockets rather than be seen wearing a blue and orange tassel the size of a muskmelon on my head. Problem there is that the damn tassel was usually too big, and ended up sticking out of the pocket, leaving you with a tassel burden anyway. Still, if the weather was temperate enough, it was the closest I had to a viable alternative.

When the temperature dropped into the single digits, though, and the cap with the big stupid tassel was your only available head covering, what's a nine-year-old to do? I tried the "cap inversion" trick only once, but soon realized that it left me looking like I had some sort of grotesquely misshapen skull, or monstrous tumor.

Morgan and I both agreed, both of us having learned from experience, that the only feasible alternative to preserving one's young, fragile self-esteem was to clip the offending tassel off when you were at school. But that only solved half your problem, as it meant that you had to spend the entire trip home that afternoon trying to come up with some sort of believable excuse.

"Ummm...Mom, um? You remember me, um, telling you about that bully? That one who's been picking on me? Well, um...today? Today at lunch? He pulled my hat off and then ran away with it. And then? And then he ripped off the tassel. Just tore it right off...just to be mean."

"Oh, that's terrible! Well, just give me the tassel and I'll put it right back on there for you."

"Well, umm...no, I can't do that, see...because then? Then he gave me back the hat, and then ran away with the tassel...and then he threw it up on top of the school roof..."

A favorite excuse amongst the tassel-afflicted went something like this:

"Um, Mom? I-I was walking to school this morning? And my hat got snagged in a tree I was walking past? Really, really caught up on the branch? A-and I-I'm sorry?I didn't have any choice...I...had to chew my way free! I'm lucky I got out of there alive!"

(When you grow up in a town populated by hunters and trappers, you hear plenty of stories about small woodland creatures chewing their own legs off to get out of traps. A terrible, horrible thing, indeed?but hey, if you can use it to your advantage.)

"Well, did you bring the tassel home with you? I'll sew it right back on."

"Well, no, um... It was really snared in there. And way up high, too!... There was just no way..."

Excuses such as these worked perfectly for a good many years. Then those bastards at Ronco or some such company came out with this cheap tassel-making gizmo called "The Pom-Pommery" (if memory serves). Two little pieces of plastic that would allow you to whip out a brand new tassel from scratch in 30 seconds or less.

I hated that company. That's why, in my teens, I switched over to fedoras.

Thank God we're older now, and no longer have to live in fear of friends or relatives knitting us hats with big dumb tassels on them. Funny thing is, we're not beyond making fun of other people who still wear them.