Well, there's a definite nip in the air, so you know what that means. Time to get out the hat.


Any hat will do. Fur, wool, acrylic, felt -- it really doesn't matter. Because in the end, the hat's most obvious function, that of head-warmer, falls somewhere behind its true primary purpose: to keep you part of the crowd, a team player, a person who goes with the flow. It protects you from the elements, but not just the atmospheric ones. There's also the ultimate chill, the Scorn of a Random Babushka. Better to just put something on your head than risk an unwarranted public humiliation.


This may come as a surprise to some people. But the Moscow hat hex is a little like food poisoning -- you've either never had it or you have it all the time. Once a single babushka has had her way with you, it seems, the floodgates swing open and an entire city of underoccupied old women crash over you and your brazen hatlessness, for this winter and every winter to come.


It would be one thing, certainly, if the babushki went with the maternal, care-giver approach: "You poor thing, it's terribly cold out, you'll catch your death without a hat." Who could object to such selfless concern from total strangers? But these women are mad as hell. "What's the matter with you? Walking around with no hat. You should be ashamed of yourself!"


Why do they care? Walking around with no clothes, perhaps, or walking around with a semi-automatic rifle -- that could probably be considered an affront to the public good. Not wearing a hat seems fairly inoffensive in comparison. Foolhardy, perhaps. That 80 percent of the body heat you're losing through your head isn't making anyone else any warmer, believe me.


But could it actually be that you are doing other people harm by not wearing your hat? Are you the parasite who's been draining the state drugstores of their nose drops and herbal tea?


It might be worth taking a moment to consider in what other ways you're menacing society with your reckless ways. Missing a few buttons off your coat? Got a few loose threads lying pointlessly on your jacket? Shoes haven't been shined in a few weeks? A hole in the finger of your glove? God forbid, wet hair? Pull yourself together, citizen! Nothing is more odious than a person who refuses to take care of himself. Then again, nothing is more enlivening, for some Russians anyway, than a good yell at a person they hardly know. It seems to work wonders for the babushki.


So wear the hat, or don't wear the hat. It's hard to know which way you might actually be pleasing them more.