The Bleach Boys

A couple Saturdays ago, I mentioned my experience of bleaching the guy's swim teams' heads. I must comment a little further on the subject. First of all, it's sweet walking through the halls, and then, amidst the hundreds of other students in my way, I spot a bleached head. That just makes me laugh in side. (Not out loud, so no LOL on this one.) I do SOL (smile out loud). That goes away when I walk into my class to find a pop quiz waiting on my desk. Hooray! But that's beside the point.

Back to the Blondie's. It's even better at lunch. There are four lunch shifts to accommodate the entire student body of about 2K. (I am somewhat in an abbreviating moment. Can you tell?) I don't know if it's like this in all the lunch hours, but mine is particularly full of Blondie's. Standing in line #2, I have a clear pass of the entire cafeteria. Bleached Blondie's everywhere! Not that makes me SOL a little louder. Then the trick is trying to remember if I happened to have bleached one of heads myself. That's the best.

Not everyone on the team died their hair. I guy sits next to me in math. Last year he did bleach his hair. But the results were somewhat representative of the movie Grease when the beauty school drop out girl turned her hair pink. Needless to say, the kid my math class had orange hair. ORANGE! Like the kind you eat ORANGE! I can see why he didn't want to risk the humiliation two years in a row.

Other swimmer did bleach his hair, despite warning signs similar to O.J. This guy is a foreign exchange student from Palestine. Where he's from, bleaching your hair would be highly inappropriate, if not condemned. Seeing as he was not home but in America, however, he got his hair bleached. When I was talking to him the other day, I asked him about it. He said as of now, his brother is the only one who knows about; his parents don't know....yet. It gets better. In a week or so, the whole team shaves their heads for championship season. I don't think the family knows about that either. Luckily, he doesn't return to Palestine for another five months. Let's just hope his hair grows back normally in that time.

This points an important element of cultural exchange, cardinal collisions if you will. Not all cultures are the same. What may be normal in one, may be social suicide in another. If you are unaware of such differences, who knows what might happen. So if you are thinking about going to Timbuktu to bleach your hair, do a little research first. Just a suggestion.

*Image courtesy of hawknestemarket.com/Collectibles.htm