It is a well-known secret among biblical scholars that there is a missing commandment. The Famous Eleventh. But biblical scholars don’t like to talk about this mistake because they don’t want people to get upset.

Luckily, though, the Eleventh has been preserved orally for thousands and thousands of years. You’ll recognise it immediately. “Wear a Hat!” God commanded Moses on that fateful night in the desert, and then He added, “It’s chilly up here on this mountain. Are you looking to get sick?”

The reason why this crucial commandment got left off was because Moses, like most people back then and continuing to the present, only had ten fingers. So as God rattled off His Laws, Moses jotted them down on his digits with a leaking desert berry. Taking notes this way was a common practice at the time and is the original source for the term “shorthand.”

Well, after all ten fingers were used up, he scribbled on his wrist, “Wear a Hat!” I should point out that most commandments originally had exclamatory remarks, but for some reason stiff-necked grammar teachers have had an unusual prejudice against

“!s” and they are practically extinct in literature, though they are trying to make a comeback in comic books. If you think about it, there probably would be a lot less breaking of commandments if “!s” were reinstated. There’s a big difference between, “Thou shall not commit adultery,” and “Thou shall not commit adultery!” Hear the emphasis? Much more intimidating.

Anyway, after getting everything down with his leaking berry, Moses figured that after God left, he would put the Laws on stone tablets for his presentation to the group. The problem is that Moses forgot about the Eleventh Commandment on his wrist because his baggy robe covered it up. The tablets were done by the time he remembered, and it was too arduous a task to start over. You’ll notice that there are a lot of misspellings on stone tablets, and in the Egyptian tombs for this very reason.

Well, Moses let the people know about the Eleventh, and so the Word spread, but it lacked official weight having been left off the tablets, and people didn’t refer to it as a Commandment. But it did become an underground hit, if you know what I mean. And it’s the reason to this day why the Pope, religious Jews, Country and Western singers, sea captains, and people in cold and warm climates—in essence, all people—wear headgear at some point in their lives.