Bonnets on or off?

[Tobus]

That's gross. If you wash your hair, it will be clean. If you remove your hat and your hair is messed up, well comb or brush it! Duh.

If you come inside your house and your hair is so foul that you have to wear a hat, then go take a shower, immediately.

"Common courtesy" here is a cop-out to good personal hygene

.

This whole business is silly, guys.

If I'm out working on fences in my horse pastures (like I was this past weekend), and I need to go to the hardware store for supplies before they close for the day, am I supposed to shower before doing so? Especially if my purpose is to just get what I need and head back out to the pasture? I live quite a ways from town, and if I'm there, I might also stop by the post office to check my mail, and maybe stop at the feed store before heading back out to the homestead to keep working. Should I have showered and fixed my hair like a proper gentleman for this ridiculously common task, just so I can take my hat off indoors like a proper gentleman?

That would be a trifle absurd.

Maybe some of you live the kind of lifestyle where you never get dirty or sweaty, or you never have occasion to be anywhere that you're not dressed like perfect gentlemen, freshly groomed. If so, I envy you. But out here in the real world, for those of us who don't have the luxury of living such carefree lifestyles, there are going to be occasions where one finds himself indoors but doesn't think it's best to remove his hat. Because, quite frankly, it's not that important. Heck, the people who work at the hardware store wear hats themselves... indoors! Rubes and oafs, all of them!

Church, or a sit-down restaurant, or any other place where one would expect to be clean and well-groomed and 'proper', one would of course want to remove his hat. But to state that all indoor places without exception (MoR even underlined it to drive home the point!) must be places where a hat is removed, just doesn't jibe with real life.

Surely there's a reasonable middle ground here. Either that, or it's impossible to be a "gentleman" without having servants do everything for you, where you're free to remain pristine all the time.

But according to MoR, I'm a rube and an oaf, so I guess my opinion doesn't matter.