The Hat Incident (part of Venice)

On our way to lunch one day, we stopped at a bridge (like always) to let Anthony watch the boats go by. Thomas and Anthony went to one side and I went over with them, but got bored and went to the other side with Cindy and my parents.
A few minutes later, Thomas walked over with this look of terror on his face and said quietly “My hat went over.”


“Ha ha!” laughed my mom, “Really?”
“Yeah,” whispered Thomas.
“Well, I guess it’s stuck there then.”
“NOOOOO!” wailed Thomas.
We all went over to the other side of the bridge to watch it float by. Then someone asked Thomas how it had happened.
“Well, I was trying to scare Anthony by saying ‘I’m going to drop my hat in the water’ and then I decided to pretend to do it, so I put my finger out below it and tried to drop it on the finger, but it missed.”
"Then I guess you deserve what happened, Thomas" declared my mom among peals of laughter from the rest of us.
We watched his hat float by and tried to think of how we could get it back. Just then, a gondola came round the corner.
"Excuse me," asked a lady nearby,"is that your hat?"
She talked to my mom for a bit in Italian, then began yelling "Gondolieri, gondolieri!"
Gondolieri is, of course, Italian for the person who poles a gondola, just like biker is English for the person who rides a bike.
The gondolieri poled over to the hat and leaned over the edge to pick it up. He threw it towards the bridge we were standing on and it landed in the middle, nearly hitting a tourist.
"Yes!" cried Thomas, "My hat!"
Even so, he may not have learned to keep a close eye on his hat because the very next day he threatened once again to throw it over, this time out of a water taxi window . . .