So I called my grandma and asked her to teach me.  No problem.  I am very confident in my abilities and knew I could learn to crochet in just a couple hours.  My grandma is ambidextrous when it comes to crocheting so she's one of the few people I knew that would be able to teach me left-handed.  The lesson was very eye-opening and made my hands hurt.  It also made me realize that I was going to need to spend every spare moment working on this hat.  But I took my needles and yarn (I had bought the wrong kind on my first attempt) and continued to work at home.  It was a necessary part of the costume.  Without it, people would be thinking "did that little boy just get back from the gym?" according to Little H.

Four days later, I got an e-mail from my grandma telling me she had made the hat and was almost done.  She was letting me know that I could stop for now, and she also mentioned that she would probably start me out on a dishrag instead of a hat.  I swear I wasn't slow and physically challenged on purpose to get my grandma to make the hat, but I also wasn't completely surprised that she made it.  She's just that kind of person.