Sunday, March 4, 2012

Adventure 31 - Quick Adjustments

Because a week is kindof a short time to go from hair dyed with fading henna to hair dyed blue to no hair at all.

To explain, I have to go back to right before freshman year of high school when I donated my hair the first time. I think it was 14", from elbow-length to a bob. Skipping ahead to Halloween senior year, I was supposed to be Penny from Dr. Horrible but hennaed my hair a nice strawberry blond rather than the correct dark red. Right before I went to college, I lopped it off again to donate, about 13", and hennaed the remainder a nice bright natural red. Last Saturday, I elected to dye my hair because I decided that a week later, I was going to shave my head.

No, this was not a hipster "natural hair is too mainstream" moment, but I had seen ads on campus and stuff for a St. Baldrick's head-shaving event to raise money for kids with cancer. Having donated my hair twice to Locks of Love, I figured, "Eh, why not? It'll grow back, and it's for a good cause." The blue came because I knew that if I ever dyed my hair blue normally, I'd probably have to shave it off to get back to the normal color anyway, so if I was only going to have hair for another week and get it shaved off anyway, might as well go for broke.

I only ended up raising $75 for the event, $25 of that being from me, but the event raised over $3500, including $1000+ from one girl who also donated her ridiculously long ponytail to Locks of Love before shaving her head. It was crazy and awesome. There were quite a few people who participated, and everyone was super nice.

It was kinda strange 'cause I ran into a bunch of people in the dining hall (normally I'll see one or two people I know if I'm lucky), and everyone's all like "OMG you shaved your head! Oh, you're so brave, that's so awesome," and I got 26 likes on my bald photo on Facebook which really shouldn't mean much to me but it felt really cool.

So far, I've only run into a few problems with not having hair. The first is the one where people come up to me and go all "You shaved your head!" on me, like I didn't know or something... The second is with my hats, because my prickly scalp likes to adhere to fleece and other hat materials, plus I now have to wear a hat when I go outside because I don't have hair to keep my head warm. And finally, a lot of people, myself included, have developed a tactile fascination with my head. It's fuzzy. And the president of the group that sponsored the shaving said that he does it ever year and it's super fuzzy for the first two months or so.

Oh, and now I notice when my hair isn't the same length :P