Project Cubbins: Hat 485 -- The Paper Pirate and the Awkward Apostrophe Edition

Day 485 / Hat 485: Folded paper pirate hat printed in black with black and white printed cord detailing around top and sides. Additional detail includes oval in center that reads: "Pirate's Dinner Adventure, Buena Park, California" accompanied by the phone number and website address of said dinner adventure.

I've had this piece of piratical ephemera kicking around the Garlodge for several years now (I'm going to guess at least five), a souvenir from a Pirate Season birthday-tide voyage behind the Orange Curtain organized by my sister-in-law 'Thleen and involving several friends and co-workers.

Those memories are hazy and every time I play them forward and back in my head I feel a little bit more of them disappear forever like a slowly demagnetizing VHS tape. If I recall correctly there are a few photos out there (and at least one piece of video) that captured the assorted buckling of swash and hauling of keel. I really ought to try to locate them. 

One thing that's impossible to forget about the experience is that super-awkward apostrophe. While I suppose it could technically be correct (one guy -- let's call him "Pirate" having a dinner adventure) the actual adventure, as it unfolded, involved many, many pirates. It feels like someone really got hung up on the whole idea of a possessive but generic pirate experience. (To see what I mean just swab [I meant that] in any particular name-brand buccaneer: "Graybeard's Dinner Adventure," "Stumpy Joe's Dinner Adventure," "Harry Hook Hand's Dinner Adventure" all work just fine.)

Or maybe I'm just looking at it through the wrong eye patch. Perhaps Pirate dangles that apostrophe out there as a kind of scar or a badge of [dis]honor to strike fear into the hearts of grammarians everywhere. 

If that interpretation turned out to be true, it would make me one very jolly roger indeed. 


Related: 
PC 325: Tiniest Swashbuckler
PC 263: Snow Pirate Pax
A Year Ago Today in Project Cubbins

Q: OK, nice hat -- but what exactly is Project Cubbins, anyway?

A: One man's homage to Dr. Seuss and his second book, "The 500 Hats of Bartholemew Cubbins," which celebrated the 75th anniversary of its publication in 2013, Project Cubbins is an attempt to document the wearing of a different hat or piece of headgear every day for 500 consecutive days. No do-aheads, no banking of hats, no retroactive entries. PC started on May 27, 2013 with Hat 1.