Try this for me; look at the hat posted above and pay particular attention to the grey lettering stitched into it. After you do that, read what you see out loud and make a note of what you actually say. Most people that see this hat, at least whenever it’s on my head, will say bewilderingly “YOLO?” Usually when that happens, I try to explain to everybody that this hat isn’t carrying a Twitter acronym and that I’m not wearing it to advertise my appreciation for a Drake song.
What’s actually printed onto the hat are the letters “L-O-L-O.” For most people that see me wearing it, they only see a word looking eerily similar to a phrase that a lot of people have shouted right before they jump off their friend’s roof into a pool. And I can understand why people would see “YOLO”, being that it differs only by one letter, and I won’t ever judge people for misreading it as such. Some people even think that I wittingly merged “YOLO” with another famous acroynm used in text-talk to show people that you’re laughing. But if people do see it that way, they don’t see it for what it actually means.
The grey letters spell out the word “LOLO,” which means grandpa in Filipino. It is a word that was used constantly throughout my childhood in reference to my grandfather, Saturnino Carreon who made his his way across the ocean to live with my family in 2002. The day he arrived in the U.S. was, for the most part, a simple day. As the six year-old me waited for him to arrive in General Mitchell International Airport, I was more so concerned about the imaginary monsters that I was shooting at with my dad’s cellphone. Nevertheless, I looked on at the gate when my mom leaped from the plastic chair towards my Lolo who had just emerged from the plane. While I can’t remember everything about that moment, it encapsulates everything about Lolo: a short Filipino man who is never seen without his smile and absolutely never seen without a hat. For the next ten or so years, he lived with me in my Wisconsin home, watching me grow up everyday as he sat looking on in a lazyboy that he declared his throne and a baseball cap that was, as I see it, his crown.
It is stories like that where the importance of the hat, posted above, rests. You see, Lolo became very ill in 2013, struggling to keep his body alive after many years on this Earth. His health slowly took his smile away, but as always he made sure to keep wearing a hat. On the way to one of the many hospital visits myself and my brother, Michael, made to see our Lolo, we felt the need to do something that could bring a smile to his face. So we made a stop at the mall, to get him a gift: a t-shirt or a watch didn’t seem to matter at all but we wanted to get him something. After passing countless stores, some of which carried t-shirts that said “YOLO,” we figured a hat would be perfect. So we handed a kiosk worker some money and a piece of paper that said “LOLO” on it to make the last gift that we would give our grandfather, who passed away shortly after we gave it to him.
Now, It would be ignorant of me to expect everyone to know that and even more ignorant to think that anyone would know the importance of the hat. But, as the countless times that I’ve had to defend my wearing of Lolo’s hat, people assume too much based off of first glances that they make. Everything has a story, so don’t’ just look at something once and think that you know everything about it.
