If you’ve been on campus at all this fall semester, there’s a good chance you’ve seen a tall, red and white striped hat poking up above the rush of students. That’s not your imagination. That’s just the Cat in the Hat guy.
Justin Harris has made quite a name for himself at FGCU within the first two months of his freshman year. In between his classes, he strolls around the campus wearing the iconic Cat in the Hat cap.
He wears a backpack like the rest of us, except his comes with a twist. His ‘bag of tricks’ is stuffed full with props that he cleverly weaves into conversation with students.
The most infamous of these props is the skeleton that keeps peeking up through the zipper.
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“So I just got a skeleton because I thought, well, I could do a bunch of bone jokes,” said Harris. “So I thought that might tickle someone’s funny bone.”
Harris removed a detailed, rather hefty statue of Napoleon Bonaparte from his bag, stating that he was short on jokes. However, he has more than a few. As if the bag itself were bottomless, Harris had with him a chessboard, beachballs, over thirty dice and plenty more items he’d like for students to see for themselves.
Donning the hat doesn’t happen by chance. Harris shared his intentions for stepping into the persona.
“Okay, so the reason for the Cat in the Hat would just basically be because I wanted to do something new for college,” said Harris.
Harris attended Riverdale High School before starting at FGCU. Though the Cat in the Hat identity is new for him, he’s no stranger to playing eccentric characters.
He was referred to by some at Riverdale as ‘the wooden-handed boy’ for carrying around an articulated wooden hand that he still keeps handy. He was also known for often having a sticky note attached to his forehead that would display a variety of messages.
Harris says he wants students to get to the point where they’d find it more peculiar to see him without the hat than they would to see him wearing it in the first place.
“Keep doing stupid stuff. There’s not really much I have to say, there’s not really a disconnect here at all,” said Harris.
Harris is the character, and the character is Harris. He’s just hoping to keep his peers laughing. He’s done quite the job of it, too.
Freshman Bodhi Warren has had frequent interaction with Harris on campus over the course of his first semester. Like many others, he’s found himself quite entertained by the routine.
“I think my take on him is that he’s using his free will to his fullest extent. Like he knows that as humans, we can basically do whatever we want, oftentimes we don’t in favor of going through the motions of our day,” said Warren. “And I think he fights against that in what he does, in using his freewill to the fullest extent to make people laugh, and I think, as such, we need more people like him.”
Harris had no intention of taking the hat off anytime soon. He’s even open to the idea of taking on companions.
“If someone were to just walk up to me and just pretend to be Thing One or Thing Two, I would go along,” said Harris.