She wasn’t a hat person.
She was a fat person.
Centuries of selective breeding had created the Morrison family, a subspecies of urban society prone to using words like suave and poignant in everyday conversation, often pronouncing them wrong and with no audience to correct them. There was a time when hats were still fashionable for women, the days of a bouquet cap to bruncheon and feathers to table-tennis matches. Those days had passed.
And yet every Thursday in the table-tennis circuit, Mrs. Morrison waved her flabby arms, spouting sequins and fake flowers from her head.
It was enough to make him sick.