I probably should have put more thought into this

After eight years of living in hot, muggy, South Florida, I had grown tired of having my hair "buzzed off" every three weeks. I was an awkward, gawky teenager, and my long, skinny neck was even more pronounced by the lack of hair on my head. It was like a golf ball on a tee sticking out of my shoulders. When Dad retired from the Coast Guard, he went on a search for a civilian job. This search landed us in Charlotte, North Carolina, where, they actually have 4 seasons every year. I decided that it was time for a change. I told my friends in Florida that I was going to do it all differently in my new neighborhood. First, I would begin growing my hair out. I wanted to look like those rockers I so admired. To continue developing my new "rocker" image, I boasted that I was going to beat the crap out of the first guy to mess with me. I wanted to be a tough-guy that everyone respected. The final stage of my plan was to ask out the prettiest girl in school whether she had a boyfriend or not. The new, bold, rugged Mike Vaughan was going to be a ladies man as well as a "Cowboy from Hell."

Well, long story short, I managed to start growing out my hair, and that was about it. No fights until a year or so later (maybe another blog-worthy story), and I had this "jello-knee syndrome" which prevented me from even having a normal conversation with the girls I liked. At least I stuck with the new hair plan. One out of three isn't too bad, right? The thing is, after shaving my head for 8 years, I didn't have much of a part, and I found that, as my hair began to get a little length to it, that I have a mixture of wavy and curly hair, which doesn't translate into a very good look. The "Ricky Martin/duck-butt" hair-do was in at the time, and mine looked more like an afro and a mullet got together at a drunken party and had an illegitimate, red-headed stepchild.

But I had a plan. Oh, yes.

I couldn't put all of my hair back into a ponytail, but I could make a few mini-pigtails that, for some reason, I thought screamed, "I'm tough; I'm cool; I'm METAL!" In actuality, they screamed, "I'm an idiot; I'm an attention-whore; I'm going to be a virgin for a long, LONG time." Every morning on the school bus (because neither of my parents would have allowed me to go out like this) I took the rubber bands out of my back pack, bunched up as much hair as I could from the top-back of my head, and made a little samurai pigtail to show my coolness. Next, for the purpose of looking like a real metal-head (which I was), I put the hair that was in my face into two miniature pigtails that had kind of an "antennae" look to them. Yup, red hair, samurai knot, antennae. I looked like Pebbles Flintstone on acid.

For three months, I walked around school with kids pointing and giggling, and calling me "Haircutt" to my face. I think people talked to me mostly because they felt sorry for this clueless, wannabe-kid trying to make a statement.
"Oh, if only my friends in Florida could see me now."