Seemed like a good idea at the time...

Have you ever done something stupid? I'll bet you have! Seems like I've been notorious for doing things that I later come to regret. If you have stopped laughing at the clown in the picture to the left, let me tell you the story behind it.

It was my 35th birthday, August 3rd, 2000. I was working at Panasonic at that time. My good buddy, and co-worker, John Roy, came up with a "brilliant" idea. "Hey Barn, (he called me Barn, amongst other nicknames) have you ever thought about dying your hair?" "Uh, well, yeah, I've thought about it," was my reply. "What's say you and me get the Slim Shady doo? If we go and do it at the same time, people won't make fun of us as much." That sounded reasonable to me, so in my stupidity, I agreed. Now, if you don't know who Slim Shady is, he's a crazy white rapper guy that has almost white blonde hair. He was real popular in the 1999-2001 years. Bear in mind that both John and I have naturally dark brown hair, almost black.

So, together we rode to a beauty parlor on Clinton Hwy. We told the girl working there what we had in mind. She smiled and said, "no problem." John and I were whisked away to the back room, put into barber chairs, and then doused with some type of chemical that acts as a bleaching agent. The hairdresser said that first she had to strip all of the color out of our hair. I remember her telling me that since my hair was so dark, she would have to use an extra amount of the stripper. She slathered that stuff on my head and then stuck a women's shower cap on my head and told me to relax while it worked. I would have liked to relax but that dadgum stripper was stinging me like a swarm of angry hornets. I might as well have doused my self with gasoline and threw a match on my head. Thirty minutes went by and she returned and peeked underneath the cap. "Hmm," she said. Oh, that's never good to hear, I thought to myself. "Well, I'm afraid your hair is just so dark that it's not going to completely bleach out. But, I'll go ahead and put the dye on and see how it looks." She mixed up a secret batch of dye and began working it into my scalp. It felt like she was using razor blades to apply it with, that's how bad my head was burning.

John had the same treatment that I had and an hour later, and 40 bucks poorer, we were heading out the door. I looked at John out of the corner of my eye. "Oh, my Gosh, I hope mine don't look that bad," I thought to myself. Then we both looked at each other. There was a look of terror, then panic, then laughter. What in the world had we done to ourselves? We didn't look like Slim Shady at all. No, we looked like two clowns that had escaped from the Circus, or a mental institution.

We then went to the China Buffet to eat. We must have been the laughing stock of the restaurant. I remember going to the bathroom and looking at myself in the mirror and almost puking. I had a large angry looking red stripe running across my forehead (you can still see some of it in the picture) where the bleach had burnt my skin. I reached up and touched my head. A searing pain shot through my entire body. I couldn't believe that I couldn't even touch my own dadblame head! I went back to the table and John and I just sat there in shameful silence through our whole meal. All that kept going through my mind was, what are they going to say at work?

I found out the answer to that question real quick. I showed up Monday morning at the usual time. "Hmm, I wonder where John is?" I waited around for him in the locker room with a hat on, for about 15 minutes. The warning bell rang and I had to go clock in. John never showed. I walked through the plant as loud shouts and laughter rang throughout the building. All production ceased to operate on the assembly lines, as the operators were too busy gawking at my head to work. I slithered into my office and shut the door. Why, oh why, did I listen to John? He's a dead man next time I see him! The door to the office opened, but it wasn't John. Instead it was a line of folks coming in to see the new sideshow act. I can't even begin to describe the amount of laughing, prodding, and ridicule that I received that day. I'd rather not even think about it. Let's just say it was B.A.D.

Eventually my hair turned dark brown again and life went on. When John finally showed up on Tuesday, he had bought more dye and worked on his hair some more. It looked some better, but still clownish. I forgave him for abandoning me and we continued being best buds. Folks made fun of us for weeks and even left hateful notes on our desks when we were out of the office. I remember one of them said, "I hope you got all the attention you were looking for!" ...Yeah, I guess we did.