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Is there one man anywhere in the entire country who still takes his hat off indoors?

After I joined the navy, removing my "cover" indoors became habit. As soon as my foot passes through a doorway I instinctively remove my hat. Now I feel uncomfortable if I am wearing a hat indoors even if it is only a baseball cap at the mall. I feel like I'm doing something wrong. Before the navy, I never gave it a second thought.

One thing for sure, you don't have to be ashamed of what the Navy ingrained in you. I can't imagine anyone critizing you for that, no matter where you learned it.

Who hasn't been "indoctrinated" to behave a certain way? When I was in my mid-teens, I walked to Mass one Sunday, sat down, and waiting for Mass to begin. I happened to touch my head for some reason and "Oh no!!!" I forgot to wear a hat!

ALL women wore hats or some covering on their heads when attending Mass.

I left immediately, walked all the way back home, and attended a later Mass...wearing the obligatory hat.

Years later I recall it as an unnecessary, uncomfortable experience, and a ridiculous result of brainwashing. It is rare that a woman wears a hat to attend Mass today, and does God really care? I don't think so.

I always thought it was part of the same motion. Your right hand reaches for the doorknob and your left reachs for your hat. I remember when wearing a hat indoors was the same as spitting on the floor; it meant that you were looking for a fight. Someone was likely to give it to you.

I was in a restaurant in Tulsa when a group of National Guardsmen came in. The lids came off at the door and their manners were impeccable throughout the meal. They acted like men. Best bunch of guys I ever bought a meal for.

Back when the word "cowboy" was a slight pejorative I can remember my grandfather using the hat-in-the-house rule to differentiate. If we were in the hardware store and some yokel was wearing his hat inside my grandfather would push me toward the door and say "We'll be back when the cowBOYS are gone. Conversely, if we ran into rancher who was dignified and mannerly he might comment later "Now that's a cattleman".

The only time I ever saw him wear a hat inside was when the Clutter family was murdered near Garden City, Kansas. That morning he came in through the screen door with his jaw set and without removing his hat. The whole house became silent as he walked straight to the gun rack, removed two rifles and two boxes of shells and walked back out. We all knew that something was terribly, terribly wrong. Truman Capote wrote about it in In Cold Blood.