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Chris Moore
Illustration by Scott Drummond
Happytobe
What happens when an average, good kid dyes his hair blue
BLUE
My heart beat a bit faster as I poked the door open to my mother's sewing room and peeked in. My best friend, Zach, was right behind me, I guess for moral support. ("How warm me," I said.
"Hey mom," I said.
She was busy at her desk and didn't look up to say hello, but something blue caught her attention from the corner of her eye. Zach and I nervously laughed. "What the hell did you do?"
The nervous laughter immediately vanished. You see, whenever my mom says the h-e-double-hockey-sticks word, I know that things are not going to be pretty. "Um, I gotta go home
By Matt Beat, Jayplay writer
now," said Zach, who was afraid of the look my mother had just given me. My mother didn't really speak to me for two days after I dyed my hair blue.
Even when she did start talking to me again, she didn't really want to be seen with me in public. About the only place she would go with me was church, which struck me as odd because at church I was
greeted by more confused, disapproving stares than anywhere else. Of course, it was a Catholic church in a small Kansas town, so even if the congregation did
approve of my newfound blueness they still would be staring.
Even my friends were surprised, but most of them thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever done. I caught the attention of girls when I went out, which is something that never really happened to me before. Before I had blue hair, I guess girls didn't think I seemed wild enough for them. The "nice guys finish last theory" proved to be true. Strangers and friends
alike were still confused. Wherever I went, they would ask me, "Why did you do it?" "I don't know," I would tell them, "I guess because blue is my favorite color."
Looking back, at the time I think I was still trying to discover myself. I was a freshman at Neosho County Community College, going to school in the Middle Of Nowhere, U.S.A. (a.k.a. Chanute) My sole
purpose for being there was to play soccer, thanks to a gracious scholarship. Community college was high school to me. There were still the cliques. There was still the lingering trapped feeling. There was still boring, average, quiet me. I was 19, old enough now to express my beliefs in a way that would get noticed while not getting grounded in the process.
In Chanute, I was the only boy in town with blue hair. I'll never forget walking into the locally-owned T & R Restaurant, a place where the old timers talked about the high school football team over coffee and pancakes. The place was usually loud, but when I walked in you could hear a liberal 100 miles away in Lawrence. Some of my soccer teammates would constantly give me a hard time to a point where I would avoid being around them. What's sad is that I actually regretted dying my hair when I saw how everybody seemed to hate it. At church, at school, as a waiter, and as a soccer player, I was suddenly getting looked at differently, lumped into a "rebel" stereotype simply because of the
color of my hair.
After the initial shock had worn off, my family and friends began to actually forget about my blue hair. My mom started talking to me again. My dad came up with a new blue hair joke every time I talked to him. "So you been hanging out with the Smurfs?" he asked me one time.
I did quit my job as a waiter and finding another a job with blue hair was a bit rough, but I noticed that when people were used to my hair they tended to warm up to the idea. Eventually I wasn't even conscious of my hair.
Having blue hair was an experiment for me in many ways. I learned how quickly one's perception of someone can change. I learned that my family will always be there for me, no matter what color my hair is. But the most important lesson was not one I learned, but I taught. Before my hair was blue everyone — especially those closest to me — thought they really knew who I was. My experiment proved them wrong. With me, you don't always get what you expect.
11. 11.04 Jayplay
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