The Gorko Gazette

The Johnsons

As more and more families refuse to take off their hats indoors, we, the Johnsons of 312 Elderberry Street, Peoria, decided to take the bold and honestly unnerving step to become a hats-off household while inside our own house. Yet very soon we encountered a surprising obstacle to our good intentions, one that may surprise you as much as it did us.

What was the obstacle tell us now

No, I am going to draw this out a little further. Sit there and READ.

The origins

It was a cold and blustery day when Pastor Franny F. Hendersen stepped through the mudroom of his Peoria postwar, beige aluminum-sided bungalow, wiped his feet on the Welcome Home Pastor Franny mat, and refused to take off his hat. His wife Dorothy and their five children Ben, Henry, Robert, Chillins, and the baby later to become the hip-hop artist Word Fley gasped and stood back as Pastor Franny strode to his favorite armchair, eased himself onto its soft cushion, and settled his butt therein, all without a single motion to remove his hat.

It had happened, and right in our own neighborhood: The Doffularity.

You just made that word up

Yep, and also Word Flay. I considered calling the little shit Word Play, or Word Flaw, but what is done is done, just like hats-off inside our house. Call us revolutionaries, call us last frontiersmen, but when God and neighbor calls, we doff our hats. Baby Jonah, four-year-old Rugby, pre-teen Carl, and even myself: we make no exceptions, inside the house the hat gets doffed.

The Doffularity

The implications of Pastor Franny’s decision to leave his hat on indoors were earth-shattering for the families and neighborhoods of greater Peoria, like a picnic interrupted by a large herd of, aw why not, lawyers. Soon men everywhere began wearing their hats on indoors, refusing to doff them to ladies, and if men could do that, what was to stop them from eating food with their fingers, or leaving the toilet seat up after a tinkle, or squeezing the toothpaste right from the middle of the tube?

Nothing. Society was on the brink of utter collapse.

The battle after the war

It was a tim eo fturmoil, unrest, and uncertainty, with the threat of violence and communism hovering like a dark cloud over one once peaceful midwestern hamlet.

Which is why we took the decision to resist change, and return to the values that had once made American great. Our caps, if our caps had been red, would read Make America Return To The Values That We Once Had Such As Doffing (MARTTVTWOHSAD).

One surprising obstacle

Yes, the grassroots MARTTVTWOHSAD movement has been extremely effective, sweeping not only our midwestern state but the entire nation with its hats-off values. Not only are men doffing at home, as is correct, they are also taking off their hats in church again, in assembly halls and schools, even in grocery stores. That is right. Men everywhere are doffing their hats to ladies on the street, as they hold doors and purses for them.

Yet in no way can we begin patting ourselves on the backsides yet, brave Doffers of America, for we have detected an unexpected problem.

Male pattern baldness

The unexpected obstacle was something none of us had ever considered. There has appeared in our midst, like a bird on the back of a rhinoceros, a deeply entrenched and vehement movement of men, men who attend our churches and ocunty fairs, who may even be our relatives or loved ones, bosom confidants of your own selves, who refuse to doff their caps in public or private, and for a very selfish reason. They are afraid of embarrassing themselves because their hair is falling out.

Should an exception be made for these outliers of human civilization, these freaks of nature, these selfish bald men, who for pride and personal dignity refuse to doff?

Join the Johnsons of 312 Elderberry Street, Peoria at the town hall meeting this Tuesday, October 28th, where together as a community we shall attempt to eradicate all resistance to this immoral and filthy movement, and force men to doff as God intended, be they bald or even piebald. Ruffians we are not — men too are people. Yet if you cut us, do we not bleed? If you ask us, do we not doff?

From drifter to burgler – before and after The Doffularity

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Image: Portrait of Swinburne by William Scott Bell