I highlighted my own hair once. Actually I bleached it. Literally.

I was in Jr. High school and it was just becoming “cool” to bleach one’s hair. Frankly, I always knew it was a bad look. But I thought it might be cool to add some highlights, so I decided I’d add a streak or two in the front. There was only one problem with this. Naturally as a young 14 year old, I didn’t know the first thing about how to add highlights to one’s hair. But I had heard the term “bleaching,” so I figured that obviously must be the solution.

So, one afternoon, I went out to the garage and picked up a bottle of Clorox

I carefully soaked some bleach into my hair awaiting an intant and magical color change. When that didn’t happen right away, I decided to add more bleach and wait a little longer.

I had repeated this process several times without achieving any real results further than making my head smell lemony-fresh. So late that night I decided I’d give it one last go. I soaked my bangs in bleach liberally one more time, and sat down on my bed to wait until the appropriate time had passed.

8 hours later, I woke up.

Panicked, I ran into the bathroom. I was sure my hair would be white, or worse yet, disintegrated from the cleansing power of bleach. I would be the only bald 8th grader in a world where young adolescent teenagers find any reason to tear you down socially and emotionally just to avoid being the one getting picked on. I could hear the volley of names coming. In a hour I would go to school and forever be known as “Lemon Head,” “Charlie Brown,” and “Cabbage Patch Kid,” the premature balding, fresh smelling, wonder-kid who poured bleach onto his own hair. My life was over.

Terrified I looked in the mirror. I saw no change. I washed my hair. There was no change. Amazingly, other than a really, reeeaaally shiny tuft of hair, there was no color change.

Relieved, I went to school. As the weeks past, the sun did indeed highlight that section of my hair. By summer time I had two blond streaks in the front of my head. In fact, for the next year or two it seemed as though my hair was actually growing in lighter in areas where I had applied the bleach. Fortunately, aside from these changes (and a period of time when my hair felt slightly brittle), there were no major side affects and I retained my full and glorious head of hair. You’re welcome.

For the record, I learned a valuable lesson that day, and decided never again to experiment by putting household cleaning agents on my head. That’s probably a lesson we all need to learn at some point in life.