My hair has been through a lot.  My father started losing his hair when he was in his 20’s, and my eldest brother started losing his when he was still in his teens, so I figured I’d better enjoy mine while I still have it.  Although they say you get it from your mother’s side, I don’t buy into it… my mother still has a full head of hair, as did my Grandmother on my father’s side… The statistics don’t lie, folks… you get baldness because women give birth, and it’s the least we can do in return.  At any rate, I’ve had super-bright Day-Glo green hair, thin little dreadlocks, and have even worn it on the top of my head (which got me the nickname “cupcake” by a friend in art school.  There are no pictures of this hairstyle, so I can still look back and think it was cool, even though I know in my heart of hearts that I looked like a giant douche bag).  The dreadlocks, in hindsight, were probably the poorest of my hair choices, though… I figured if I had little thin ones (rather than the traditional thick dreads), they would smell less, and maybe I could comb them out after I got sick of them.  Apparently, I was very, very stupid when I was younger.  The smell did, eventually, leave… although it could be that it just deadened my senses.  When I got sick of them sometime later, however… I hopped in the shower with my trusty comb and tried running it through my hair.  It took three days for my throat to heal from the screams I let out.  Ultimately, I gave up and cut most of my hair off.
More recently, I’ve decided to cut my hair short (my hair looked like Don King and a squirrel had a child, and that child died while trying to chew into my brain) and let it go back to it’s normal color.  It’s funny, because I didn’t REMEMBER having grey hair when I was 16… and yet, there it is… my natural color.  There were a few reasons why I decided to cut my hair, finally… besides seeing it in pictures (which really was enough), we were over someone’s house one day, and I was hanging out with their two younger children (I believe we were playing Uno).  Suddenly, the youngest of the two (about 5-7?  I’m bad with ages on kids… I just put them under categories.  “Adorable” is typically birth until age 2.  Once they learn how to talk, they go into the category of “Annoying assholes that can’t help it”.  After age 15, they’re just plain assholes) walked up to me, looked me straight in the eye, and said “You look like a witch!”.  After punching the little girl in the face, I thought to myself “Well… is she wrong?”  I have a rather large nose, and my chin just out and curves in a weird way… yes, it was certainly witch-like.  I stopped kicking the small child and we all had a good laugh.  Then I ate them both and left my gingerbread house forever.
I have no regrets about cutting it short (I never get “can I help you, ma’am” anymore!) and I rarely think about dyeing it to cover my gray.  On those days, I just take a page from my father’s excuse book and tell people that I dye it gray so I don’t look so much younger than my girlfriend.

Roughly one year ago, I decided to try a little experiment and give up caffeine for a month.  Roughly one year ago, I was a fucking idiot.  Caffeine is an odd drug… when people quit smoking, everyone gathers around them and says “good for you”, and offers little tips and nuggets of completely useless information that the smoker never asked for in the first place.  When you give up caffeine, though… people just look at you funny and ask the obvious question.  “Why on earth would you do that?”. The only real answer you can give sounds way too much like dirty hippie nonsense like “to cleanse my system” or some bullshit like that.  Truthfully, I just wanted to see what’d happen.  Headaches are what happen, by the way.  Horribly agonizing headaches that make you lose your fucking will to live.  Well… for the first two or three weeks, anyway.  After a month, my girlfriend told me how much more pleasant I seemed since giving up the caffeine.  Being slightly obsessive, this only peaked my curiosity as to how much of an unbearable prick I was before.  “You loved me before the caffeine, so I must not have been too bad,” I suggested.  She replied by stating “Yes, but now that I know what you’re like without it… well… hindsight is 20/20, that’s all.”  I decided to push further and went another month without my drug of choice.  I noticed that I was able to wake up earlier, I had more energy throughout the day, and some of my little aches and pains went away.  Granted, it could have something to do with the black tar heroin I’m taking as a caffeine supplement, but I’m going to chalk it up to the absence of caffeine, because I can.  So my daily Diet Coke with Lime officially got replaced with Sprite Zero in the morning.  That is, until 2 weeks ago.  It was about that time that I went to my local WaWa convenience store and noticed they were sold out of Sprite Zero.  Since one time couldn’t possibly hurt, I picked up my old friend.  I have been awake for 336 hours straight now, and I may or may not have murdered an old woman that decided to pay with a check at the grocery store.  What was supposed to be a one-night-stand turned into a fling, and the fling has turned into a torrid affair.  I’ve been sucking down the caffeine like crazy for the last 2 weeks.  My back went out this weekend, and the voice in my head tells me burning things is fucking awesome.  Today, my Sprite Zero returned, and I returned to my caffeine-free ways.  Around noon, I bought a Diet Coke.  My experiment is a raging success!  I think.  Should my eyes be bleeding?

So, this past Friday was Halloween. I drove home, and had apparently only missed about 2 groups of kids. I was excited, because we’re usually too busy to do the whole Halloween “thing”. I’ve only carved pumpkins twice since moving to my neighborhood 4.5 years ago, and we NEVER decorate. We’re bad people, what can you do? We made up for it by giving away full-sized candy (there is nothing “fun” about “Fun-Sized”. The complaint is typically worded as “his penis is really small”… not “OMG! It’s so much FUN!”) So, yes… we’re the “good” house.  The shining beacon amongst toothbrushes and fruit.  The first Halloween at our house, my girlfriend and I were quite excited (it’s our first home). We put pumpkins out to dress up our house a bit, but we decided not to dress up ourselves. I had long hair at the time, but just wore my typical attire. We got our first trick-or-treaters, opened up the door to hand out candy, and we were presented with a gaggle of ‘tweens. “Oh! You’re dressed as the Osbournes! Cool!”. A little piece of me died that day… if I had only acted faster, I could have taken that little girl with it. I honestly think a big reason I cut my hair was because of that comment. Implying that I look like a 60- year old drug addict was less than kind, and it was certainly not “cool”.  Bitch.  I looked for her this year so I could finally get her back with something like “Are you sure you don’t want to skip the candy this year, fatty?” or “Oh! You’re dressed up like Rosie O’Donnel! COOL!”. I have sticks and stones ready by the door just in case words don’t hurt her. That first year, we were also visited by a gentleman that lives down the street. He and his wife happen to be crazier than shit-house rats. He came to our door and proceeded to try to put candy into OUR bowl. Now hey… if you want to poison YOUR treats, by all means… some of these kids should have been blow-jobs. I’M not going to jail for it, though, asshole. His complaint was basically that no kids went to his house because he lived on the corner. I’m thinking that it’s safe to assume that they all know you’re nuttier than squirrel shit, and you smell like Mel Gibson on a bender. His candy got promptly thrown away, but I await the day his house is surrounded by cops. This year, we barely got any kids. I am starting to wonder if the local children are onto the fact that we actually HATE most of them… with good reason, though. These kids are DICKS. We held the bowl out for these little fucking diabetic piranha, and two of them dive in, two-fisted, trying to grab what they could. It was like the little fat fucks saved all of their energy for a full year for this moment. Next year, I want two bowls. One will hold full-sized candy, and the other will hold condoms. “Give these to your parents,” I will say. It may already be too late for this batch… but maybe we can prevent future mistakes.