Last night I went to a Christmas party and wore a cowboy hat. (Saddle up, Santa.) Honestly, I’d planned to spend the day with my nose in a book, but my friend Summer, from the improv group, invited me to her place for a Dirty Santa Gift Exchange and the big reveal of her unborn child’s sex. (It’s a girl!) I’m not always in love with group gatherings, especially when they involve new people, but I told myself it wouldn’t kill me to get out of the house and be social, damn it. So I actually took a shower, put on clean clothes, and everything.

I guess last night was about getting out of my comfort zone, since I don’t usually wear cowboy hats either. But a couple months ago my friend Marina gave me this black cowboy hat, a Resistol, and it’s really cool. I believe it belonged to her son. He’s no longer alive, but his hat’s still here. All the tags are still inside the brim, and one of them says, “You have just purchased the most comfortable hat made.” (That’s good to know.) The others say it’s a size seven and three-eights. Apparently it was purchased at a western wear shop owned by Johnnie Lee Wills, a Tulsa musician who performed at Cain’s Ballroom in the 1960s, and it originally cost twenty-one dollars.

And now it’s mine.

If you’re a sore loser like I am, I don’t recommend going to a Christmas party and playing Dirty Santa. The premise is that everyone brings “a good gift” and “a bad gift,” and they all get numbered. Then one-by-one everybody draws numbers and opens the corresponding gifts. This part, of course, is hilarious. Oh look, you got a Walmart gift card (good) and some drink coasters with vaginas on them (obviously bad, at least for a gay man). Well, the dirty part of the game is that rather than opening a new set of gifts, players have the option to take someone else’s gifts, and that’s where my bad attitude started. I’d opened a gift that included a Starbucks gift card and there I was, perfectly satisfied, just minding my own business, when some bitch took it away.

No offense to whoever it was–I’m sure you’re not really a bitch and that you’re normally very kind and don’t go around stealing coffee cards from perfect strangers.

Anyway, this lady traded her gifts with me, which left me with a coffee mug and a Rugrats hat. (Rugrats was a cartoon on Nickelodeon a long time ago, Mom.) Well, two can play at that game, so I ended up stealing four giant Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (good) and a single condom (bad) from Summer’s husband. But then Summer stole those things back, and before it was all said and done, I walked away with a miniature box of generic Corn Pops cereal (bad, bad, very bad) and twenty super-girly postcards (also very bad). I thought, What the hell, universe! Feminine postcards? Can’t you see I’m wearing a cowboy hat over here?

Honestly, losing the Starbucks gift card didn’t completely ruin my evening, but it did bother me more than I’d like to admit. It’s like you think you’re making all this progress–you sell or give away almost all your worldly possessions and think, I don’t need physical objects to make me happy, I’m so–unattached. Then one round of Dirty Santa, and there you are pouting, drowning your sorrows in a bottle of beer and half a dozen chocolate chip cookies, your ego just as intact as it ever was. But I was gonna buy a frappuccino with that gift card! As if that weren’t enough, then someone suggests playing board games. Oh perfect, you think. Another opportunity to lose.

By the time I got home last night, I’d pretty much talked myself down off the ledge. I’d realized there were a handful of other things that have been stressing me out lately, little disappointments that have all added up. And whereas having a total stranger snatch away my Monday morning mocha was the final straw, it was just a straw–certainly not the entire hay bale. Plus, I had a great time at the party. I’m currently focusing on one small irritation, but it was a wonderful evening.

Recently I heard about a psychological phenomenon called The Endowment Effect, which has to do with the magical properties we assign objects when we own them. Like, how many people in the world don’t give a shit about your quilt collection or new car, but you think, These things are special–the best–they belong to me. Personally, I’m in love “my” new cowboy hat. I love that my friend Marina gave it to me, I love the tags inside, and I like to imagine her son walking into the western wear shop and trying it on all those years ago. But the truth is, it’s just damn hat, just like it’s a damn gift card, a damn board game. Things are only important because we think they are.

It seems that life is often a Dirty Santa game. We make plans for things to happen one way, then those plans get snatched away. We don’t always go home with the gifts we had our eyes on. Of course, sometimes it happens the other way around. One day you wake up with nothing, and before you lay your head down that night you’ve got a cappuccino in your stomach you didn’t even pay for. (Harumph.) If you’re lucky, maybe you’ve got someone beside you, someone who can help you use that single condom you got at the party last night. (Wouldn’t that be nice!) Life is so funny. We get upset about the smallest of things. One-by-one the straws pile up, and we break our own backs. We say, “This is mine–that’s yours–I win–you lose,” the whole time forgetting we’re supposed to be having fun down here. Life is just a game, after all.