If you haven't read Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, then you will have no idea what I'm talking about in this column. I'll try to explain it the best I can, but really, it'll spoil a small portion of the best series you've never read. So instead of reading my column, go out and read the Harry Potter books. Then you can come back and read this. It will wait for you.
To summarize though, in Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry and his classmates are introduced to a creature known as a boggart, which reproduces the greatest fear of the person who confronts it. For many, that fear is a spider, a snake, a clown. For Harry, it's a dementor, a monster which makes a person's most horrible memories and feelings come to the surface.
Since reading the book, I've often pondered what shape the boggart would take if I were the person to face it (also, assuming that boggarts were real). I once figured I'd have a similar boggart to Hermione, who fears failure. I'm also weirdly afraid of semi-trucks and the dark; both very irrational fears.
But I've since determined what I'm most afraid of in this world: that someday, my boyfriend will discover a fondness for fedoras and insist on wearing them.
I can't handle fedoras. I'm sure they have some merit, some strange fashionable appeal that I can't understand. I don't know why anyone would want to wear them, especially adult men with full heads of hair. Unless you're 25 and dating Jennifer Lopez, I'm pretty sure you can't pull off a fedora.
So yes, my greatest fear is someone I'm in a relationship with announcing completely unexpectedly "Hey, look at me in this terrific find! Don't I look dashing? Doesn't the beige-greyness look awesome? I'm going to wear this fedora all the time - no, I'm going to buy endless amounts of fedoras and you must love me despite them or else you are terribly shallow!"
How dreadful. Because after a certain amount of time in a relationship, ditching out because of a hat is extremely shallow. How could I become such a person who walked away from someone because of an accessory?
I fear fedoras, and the person they could make me become.
Or, the greatest of my hybrid fears: a semi-truck wearing a giant fedora speeding at me in the night, while I am handed back failed assignments and tests. Ugh. Maybe it's a good thing that magic and boggarts aren't real.
Tonaya Marr dropped two cupcakes on the ground on Tuesday and was so awkward that she spent two full minutes staring at then and panicking. She really wanted that darn carrot cake cupcake. You can reach Tonaya at tonaya.marr@gmail.com or on Twitter @TonayaMarr.
