Lessons Learned: Hair Dye

I’ve dyed my hair exactly once. For a production of The King and I, we were given the choice to spray paint our hair (with stuff designed for that purpose) or dye it. The spray seemed like a hassle…so I opted for SEMI-permanent hair dye. As I’ve mentioned before semi-permanent is actually permanent, and this is how I found that out.

Just before I dyed it, I had attended a meet and greet at the college I was to attend in the fall. I met all the students who would be in my freshman seminar class…with BROWN HAIR.

Here is a before shot (parting my hair in the center is still a bad choice).

Here is the after, still wet, and very black. I went to church the following Sunday and someone referred to me as a “punk”.

Finally, I thought I’d share a photo of myself in costume and with a tan (spray-on). It made for a nice look. My dad always wanted a child with black hair.

After the show was over, I went to washing my hair constantly to get the color out. I used laundry soap, dish detergent, lava soap….everything I could think of. It didn’t work. I went to college that fall with black hair and brown roots…like some kind of crazy badger.

If I had deluded myself into believing that no one would notice….I was terribly wrong. It took forever to grow out, two years later I was able to cut the last bit of black out of my hair. The things we do for "art"!

I have virtually no pictures of myself during my freshman year of college. I wish I did now…it would be funny.