The colors of fall

In the fall of, hmm, I don't remember what year (2000??), Emily Sleeman, Danielle Jones, and I took one of our infamous trips to the beach. Before I tell our not-so-funny story, a little history is necessary.

I had been meeting with Sharon Lilley and some other girls for a Bible study. I was explaining that I was heading to the beach the coming weekend, and wanted some fun ideas. Sharon's wisdom immediately kicked into gear. It started like this...."back in my day, I did some crazy things at the beach..." I should have stopped her right there. I said I wanted FUN, not CRAZY?! Anyway, when Sharon was about my age, she took regular trips to the beach with Mazy Ranneberger (that's trouble!). One such trip, they put together a basket of goodies, including some hair dye. She suggested that we might try dying eachothers hair, just for fun, but nothing to dramatic, blonde highlights perhaps?

In an effort to bless my friends, I put together a basket of stuff--Reeses Bites, Chocolate covered pretzels, a chickflick, and of course the hair dye was front and center. Once at the beach, I revealed my creativity. The dye was a big hit. We had to do it later in the weekend. Our luck. It rained one day and there was our chance to experiment. Instead of dying our entire heads, we decided to attempt blonde highlights. Danielle was first. We spent hours pulling strands of hair through that annoying cap thing. We applied the solution and waited. Directions were followed religiously. At the appropriate time, we washed her hair. There it was, perfect blondish, orangish, redish highlights. She looked incredible, as usual!

Then it was Emily's turn. We decided the cap was too much to mess with, so, like the pros, we whipped out some foil (doesn't a good hairdresser use foils and not those stupid caps anyway?!). We wanted to look blonde and babe-a-licious, not frosted and scary! We slathered on the solution and used the foils just like we had seen. Halfway through Emily's dye job, we rinsed a section off, to find her hair was NOT blonde and beautiful, but orange and a little skunk stripe like. Horrified, she ran upstairs to rinse her hair. She rinsed and rinsed, but the orange wouldn't fade. It was permanent.

Then it was my turn. Did I refuse since Emily's hair turned out less than perfect? NO, of course not. I couldn't let those two girls have all the fun!!? I thought that perhaps mine would turn out like Danielle's. I dutifully sat under the foils, waiting for what seemed like an eternity. All the while thoughts of zebras, skunks and freakish punks ran through my head. "ding, ding." The bell rang and I walk upstairs to meet my fate. I refused to look in the mirror until it was all rinsed out. And then, there they were, my very own zebra stripes. Just what I had always never wanted. I was an orange zebra.

Danielle sat quietly, surely reveling in her triumph. Emily and I...well, we complained for a bit, hated Danielle for a bit, and then decided to make the most of our adventures and take a lot of pictures to mark the disaster. If I ever find the pictures, I'll surely scan them in for your viewing pleasure!