part one of the winning entries from this year's "do my job for me" contest, much akin to jon stewart's failed you wrote it, you watch it on mtv, except you don't really get to write it. brian mcmullen wrote:

talk about the seasons of your hair's life (from birth to present i
guess).

i have never seen your hair except for in that one "old" photo on your
site.

i have enjoyed your sermons for over two years now i think.

maybe some ascii drarings of your hair.

now this, chronologically the first entry i received, is almost too coincidental. because there's a fair chance i would've written about that this week even if there were no contest: i got a haircut on sunday.

but i'm getting way ahead of myself. when i was a child, i established pretty early on that i didn't like having my hair too short. there was one alleged incident of me cutting my bangs almost entirely off, but after that i knew i enjoyed having some length to my hair. no buzz cuts for me. it never got too long, though, because i tended to alternate between 2 distinct, almost opposite cuts. sometimes i would grow a mini- or proto-mullet with the hair on top & on the sides pretty short & the back a little longer. then when it grew out i would get the sides & back cut short & let it get longer on top. there was always something to run my fingers through, some hair somewhere that would flop around a bit. even then, the sensation of my hair moving, rubbing against my skin, was important to me.

by the beginning of high school i'd pretty much settled for a standard cut with the sides neatly cropped & the stuff on top a bit floppier. maybe on some subconscious level i realized that the mullet (aka the short-long, hockey player haircut, sotlib) i'd abandoned would in the future become one enormous joke, mocked across the internet, & then brought to the silver screen by david spade. or maybe not. either way, the minimullet was gone, replaced by the more conservative cut, which would itself be gone soon enough.

high school life did not agree with me. at some point early in my sophomore year, i decided to hell with it. i stopped trying to gain the attention of the popular crowd, or really of anyone but a few people. i entered my formal rebellion period. i drew anarchy symbols on stuff. & i started to grow my hair out. unfortunately for me, at the same time i was going through these social changes, my body was undergoing a few chemical changes. at the exact time i started to grow my hair out, it became naturally curly.

so in what seemed like only a matter of months, my hair went from a somewhat styled straight look to a curly mop like you'd expect to see on a 6-year-old in an oatmeal commercial. i developed strange new cowlicks & curls in unfortunate places. in particular, on one side of my face my bangs would curl off & out to the side in an enormous curlycue which extended at least an inch or 2 outward from my head. it was dubbed "the curl" & took on a life of its own, especially in my oral interpretation class, where i would nervously flip my head to the side to get the curl out of my eyes.

but i stuck with it, & by the later part of my senior year my hair was pretty long. girls would complement me on my hair, jealous of its lustrous sheen & body & the golden ringlets it formed as it fell to my shoulder. they'd ask me what i did to it & i'd be honest: i washed it, towel-dried it, & then brushed it. once or 2x in high school i dyed it (with temporary dye, once for the open house because the administration had been privately asking students who looked different not to attend... & as mr bigshot rebel, i couldn't let that stand. but the purple dye was barely visible in my strawberry blond locks). that mane lasted me until college.

in the 2nd semester of my freshman year, in a time of much heartbreak & emotional pain, i decided it was time for something to change... & that something might as well start with my hair. i was already known on the floor as an accomplished hairstylist with the clippers (i didn't really use scissors, though), & went quietly to the other person on the floor who gave out haircuts, andy. i asked him quietly if he could cut my hair, but within minutes most of the floor had gathered around to watch. i got a classic '90s "undercut" (i've also heard the term sulot), with the sides & back shaved (most people used a #2 guard, but i had it shaved all the way down) & the rest cut even near the top of my ear. basically, it was bowl cut with the sides shaved. then i dyed the bangs black.

i kept shaving the sides for years. the length of the top would vary, sometimes getting cut near the ear & sometimes growing past my shoulder. the color changed regularly. after my black-banged period, i decided to go all out colorwise. so i bleached my hair & started picking up bright-colored dyes at punk rock stores. i went through blue, purple, orange, green, & so on. each color would take on a life of its own as it faded away in each wash.

but soon enough i grew bored of having only one haircolor at the same time. i developed what i called the "dark stAllio!" look: it was all dyed black except for a few inches by my right bangs. that area was reserved for another color, & it went through various colors of its own, sometimes 2 at once. then i got bored of the hassle of dying that one stripe all the time, & of bleaching it periodically, so i left it alone. at first it was yellow from the bleach, & as time passed it became a stripe of my natural haircolor. but i kept redying the black part for some time. it was just that cool. but after i'd been dying that part black for 2 or more years, i grew tired of even its coolness. so i stopped using the black dye & let my roots grow.

that alone gave me a look that changed as it grew, the black slowly receding downward as time passed. once the roots were several inches long, i tested dying them red, in the hopes that as more roots grew out, i would have something like horizontal stripes in my hair, almost like a german flag. but that didn't work out, because there's enough red in my natural color that the contrast was subtle. that was... maybe... mid-2000. & that was the last time i put any dye in my hair. i can barely remember the last time complemented it for its body... i've done plenty of damage since then.

the sides would naturally grow also. usually i'd keep them shaved in summer, & when it cold i'd let them grow out to keep me warm. a few years i grew sideburns to go with it. but come spring i would always shave them again. the past couple years i would even plan not to shave them, just let them grow on out, but i never would. so finally, this year, i did. just this past sunday, i had my mom cut all the hair that had been long to about my chin. i once again the chilibowl, the mushroom. the sides still need to catch up a little, but it's like i have one haircut again, not a long wig on top of a short haircut. the long hair was all dead & split ends, anyway. the hair isn't short by any means, but it's surprising how much easier it is to deal with. i don't have to hold my hair when i go to the drinking fountain, which is something i've had to do for 3 years or more. it's nice, & it's a change. not to mention that it sets the stage for... my hair of the future!