Story Hour
Nicker Finds a Hat
Written by Gene B. Williams
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Before we get to the real story – have you ever thought much about hats? They are very interesting when you think about it. The most simple use is to keep sun or rain off of your head. Another might be to keep your head warm when the weather is cold.
Sometimes, they are just for fun!
Have you ever made a hat?
VIDEOS:
making a palm leaf hat here
boy making a paper hat here
princess cone hat with hearts here
This story needs either a LOT of drawings, or a lot of your imagination. Marci is very busy right now to get the first Nicker Stories book ready for you. Danny and I are very busy right now getting the stories recorded so you can also listen to them. So … put on your magic imagination hat. (If you don’t have one – make one.)
Imagine our favorite sea dragon wearing a hat, and also wearing a silly grin.
Imagine a hat on your own dog or cat.
Imagine all kinds of hats, and how you can make them.
Imagine Nicker making a hat – with no arms or hands.
Imagine a hat made from a leaf.
Imagine a hat made from seaweed.
Imagine …. Well, just imagine.
And go here. Trust me. It will help you imagine the story.
Nicker Finds A Hat
It was September. As you know, September is Hat Month! Yes, that’s right. The whole month is for hats! Make them, wear them, toss them into the air … “whatever toots your whistle,” as Nicker likes to say. (I don’t know why he says that. Maybe it has something to do with tug boats?)
Danny’s teacher, Mrs. Washington, brought in all sorts of things for her students. She had felt for felt hats. She had paper for paper hats. She even had straw for straw hats. Then there were ribbons and buttons and sequins and feathers and …. Well, you name it and it was probably somewhere in one of those boxes.
Danny rolled some black paper to make a top hat. “Like Abraham Lincoln,” he said.
Nicker looked at Danny’s paper hat. “I tried to make one of those once.”
Danny asked, “What happened?”
Nicker paused a moment and said, very sadly, “It melted.”
He was right, you know. A paper hat out in the ocean doesn’t last long. If you don’t believe me, make yourself a paper hat then just go take a shower or bath. What a mess! (I guess you’d better not take a paper hat into the shower or bath. I don’t think the grown-ups would like that!)
For the moment, Danny took off his paper top hat and put it on Nicker’s head. If you can imagine Nicker wearing a top hat, you’ll know why Danny started to laugh right away. That, of course, made Nicker laugh, which made Danny laugh, which made Nicker laugh … you know that goes.
The two boys spent a wonderful afternoon making and wearing all sorts of hats (and laughing). The more they laughed, the sillier they got. Soon they were making hats for the cats. (The cats didn’t like that much.)
Danny twisted some black paper into cones. Nicker went to Lake Edie and got some sticks. For almost an hour, the two pretended they were wizards with magic wands. They tried to puff and poof and alacazam … but never quite got it right. A squirrel refused to change into a toad, and just ran up a tree. That was okay, though. They had fun!
Nicker was still thinking about how his paper hat fell apart (melted) in the ocean.
Then Danny got an idea.
One time when he went to visit Lake Edie, along the shore were huge plants with huge leaves. His Nana (Edie, of course) had plucked one, folded it, then used a piece of the stem as a sort of pin. In an instant, Danny had a great hat!
“Go get us some seaweed,” Danny told Nicker.
Well … you’ve seen seaweed. It doesn’t have big leaves. But it didn’t take long before Danny had made seaweed head bands for both Nicker and himself. He twisted on very interesting piece of seaweed and made Nicker a crown. Then he used his magic wand (the stick from earlier – remember?) and said, “I dub thee KING Nicker.”
But then came a new problem. Have you guessed what it is?
You see … a paper hat doesn’t last long in the water. But a seaweed hat doesn’t last long on land. It dries out. In fact, before the day was over, Danny’s seaweed hat was a mess. It was even getting to be crumbly, the way dried out things get to be.
Well, you see it was this way.
Nicker’s paper hat that Danny made for Nicker was all soggy.
Danny’s seaweed hat that Nicker made for him was all dry and crumbly.
The two boys looked at each other. They said, at exactly the same time ….
“I’LL MAKE YOU ANOTHER ONE!”
And, they did.
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