About 13 years ago...

Back in '98-'99, a really excited football team all dyed their hair blonde and wanted to make a wager on their season.  They came to a couple of suckers teachers, and asked if we'd be game:  they'd win the first five football games, and we'd dye our hair blonde, too. 

I gladly took that bet.  I had a pretty good idea, they wouldn't win the first five.  AND...they didn't.

After the game they lost, they were pretty down.  They came back with another wager:  they'd beat rival school, and we'd dye our hair blonde.  There was no way I'd agree to that.  Both teams were pretty equal, so the odds were only 50-50.

Being the intelligent gambler that I am, I told the boys they'd have to beat rival school by more than 20 points.  If they did that, we'd dye our hair.

(Did I mention the other teacher was the band instructor?  And a man?  I was the cheer sponsor, so I guess they felt like we should show our school spirit through gambling. Intelligent decision making didn't play into this one!)

I figured our team might win, but figured it would be a close one.  It was supposed to be....

We played the game on rival school's field.  Who knew that rival team would lay down and die?

Seriously, I think our players cut a deal with them and told them to fall down and play dead.  Tiny Town High steamrolled over them and beat them by 30+ points.

I knew I was in trouble when the Tiny Town team were all turning around from the field and pointing at the two of us in the stands.  Yep.  At one point, the cheerleaders were yelling, "Blonde!  Blonde! Blonde!"  It was ugly.

I barely got out of the stands before the senior players surrounded me and wanted to come by the house and dye it that night.  Yeah, like that was going to happen.  I would have looked like a straw version of Ronald McDonald if they had done that. (Like what I ended up with was much better!)

No.  That Saturday, I paid big money to have all the color stripped from my hair. (If you've seen those pictures of Dennis Rodman from the late 90's, that's exactly what I looked like.)  My stylist colored my hair glow-in-the-dark blonde.  I scared myself when I passed mirrors or windows. Thankfully, for the life of me I can't remember what I did with the pictures. 

My band colleague colored his hair, left it for a couple weeks and cut his hair short.  Voila!  Back to normal.

Me?  It took almost a year to get my hair back to normal.  For awhile, I felt like a two tone station wagon.  (The stripped part took dye differently than the regrowth of new hair. *Lovely!)  Finally, we cut it short to get rid of the stripped hair and dyed it back to dark brown.

Best comment of all?  My dad took one look at the blonde me and said, "God really does know what he is doing with hair color, doesn't he?"  Nice one, Dad.  And very tactful!

Thus ended the gambling career.

So be it.  Amen.