You ever wonder why you fought with your dad so much when you were a teen?
Oh, if only we could ever get to the root of it…
“Dammit, son, not again…again! You’re an embarrassment to all the farmers of Morton County…dear lord, why me?!? Why am I stuck with the kid who can’t appreciate his G0d-given beautiful blonde hair?”
Honestly, I’m not sure how I was expecting Dad to react when I unveiled my latest hairstyle featuring half-red/half-black on top, with natural sun-bleached blonde on the bottom.
I mean, I was doing it for the proverbial sh*ts and giggles during an uncharacteristically boring stretch of my final summer on the farm before college. Yes, yes, you remember that summer right? The Crazy-Ass Summer of ’99? Yeah, that one. This was the product of the sole week that defied one of our mantras of that summer, “Never a dull moment!”
Ol’ Papa Bob, on the other hand, didn’t seem to appreciate neither the “sh*ts” nor the “giggles” aspects of the situation. In retrospect, I would venture to say he seemed a little tired of my version of teenage angst playing out as me running around the country side looking like a techni-color jackass.
“Tired?” you ask? Oh, yes, this wasn’t the first time him and I danced this little dance…
“Whoa! Who’s the new guy?!? Seems kinda odd, ya know? Like, who transfers high schools in the middle of November?”
“I can hear you–I’m standing right here!” I reminded my classmates as they murmured about me from a few lockers down.
“Wait…what?!? I mean, Who?!?” was the inevitable reply each time, as their eyes told them one thing, yet their ears told them something completely different.
“‘Tis I, the Noble and Beloved Junior Class President Runner-Up!” I would reply every time.
“The heck is going on here…wait…can it be? BJ, is that you? What in the tarnation did you do to yourself?!?”
Honestly, when I dyed my hair black on a lark, I didn’t anticipate the most enjoyable benefit of doing so: confusing the living ----- out of everyone I know, and getting to watch it play out in real time as they look me directly in the face and slowly but surely put the pieces together.
“Uh, yeah, so I thought I would try something new and dyed my hair black. What do you think?”
“I think you look like a totally different person…and also, damn, son, I never realized you had such thick, bushy caterpillars for eyebrows. But, hey, props to you for really committing to the part and dying them as well…”
“Yeah…I didn’t realize my eyebrows wear so bushy either, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have pulled this stunt…”
Speaking of ‘stunts’, you probably already guess that my Diddy was none too plussed to come home from a hard day out in the fields to find that his son had conned his stepmother into letting him make use of her leftover black hair dye.
“Oopsies! Well, I guess were stuck waiting for it to grow out now!” was logic that didn’t do me any favors, nor managed to make him any less irate.
Quick side note here: ‘Daisy’–the one who supplied me with the dye and applied it–wasn’t really upset with me, in part because she had as much a hand in it as I did. Well, she wasn’t upset until she had one of her rolls of film developed and found that I had taken the liberty of taking a black-headed selfie with her camera.
How did I discover this factoid? I totally bet you’re wondering that right now, right? Well, I’ll tell you how: once when I borrowed her sweet, sweet Eagle Vision, I discovered torn up bits of something in that part of the door you pull on to shut it. I soon realized it was that one selfie I had totally forgot I had taken. Not to let my effort to be in vain, I collected all 30-40 tiny pieces, and successfully reconstructed the picture, holding them all together with masking tape on the back. In fact, I probably still have that trophy picture to this very day…
But I digress…
Later that spring…
“Oh happy day! Our spring school portraits are in!” all of us students exclaimed, though we were all still unsure of why we had school pictures taken again despite knowing full well that the ones they took in the fall would be the ones used in the yearbook.
“Oooh, that’s unfortunate, buddy,” one of my random classmates commented as the looked at my pictures over my shoulder.
“Yeah, I suppose I didn’t put much forethought into what I would look like several months after dying my hair black…”
“Don’t worry,” they half-assedly tried to reassure me, “I’m sure you’re dad will still proudly distribute these regal pictures of you to all your family members. Even if you look like a ----- skunk…”
“Stone Temple Pilots are playing in Amarillo?!? Tonight?!? Phillip K. Ballz, you best not be yanking my chain, ya hear?”
“Nah, man, I swear I’m shootin’ straight and true–do you think your dad would take us?” Ol’ PKB wistfully inquired with his trademark half-assed Texas accent.
“I doubt it, but it’s worth a shot…I’ll get right on it!” I said with measured optimism.
Seeing as how it was the last day of my Sophomore year of high school, and was about to head off to live in sunny Southern California with my mom for the summer, I felt there was a tiny glimmer of hope that Dad would at least be open to taking us two dumbasses 2-1/2 hours due south to see a band he had never heard of play…right?
Okay, actually I wasn’t that optimistic at all, so you can bet your buns that I was quite surprised when he said he would take us–“If we can score some tickets, that is,” he said.
“Holy sh*t! He said ‘yes–contingent upon the logistics working out!’ Can you believe it?!?” Yup…I’m pretty sure that’s how I shared the good news with PKB.
“Well, hot dang! I better pack my bag–the concert starts in like, 4 hours, right?”
“Oh, right, yeah, I guess we better start heading that way whether we have tickets or not…”
Now, friends, I need to remind you that this tale is taking place in 1997, a good few years before Ticketmaster started ruining the experience of live music for concert-goers all across this fine nation. So if one wanted tickets to a concert, then most likely you would have to call up the box office and see if they had any available.
Also, cell phones weren’t ubiquitous back then, and even if you were lucky enough to have one of those bag-phones in your car, one surely couldn’t afford to waste their precious 45-minute monthly allotment on hold with the Amarillo Civic Center.1I did my homework, and the internets verified my memory of this whole ordeal: https://www.setlist.fm/stats/concert-map/stone-temple-pilots-bd6b9ee.html?year=1997.
Somehow, these factors, combined with the fact that the only ride me and PKB had was Peppermint Paddy–my less-than-reliable red-and-white pickup whom you might remember from this story and it’s sequel–ended up with us following this convoluted plan as follows:
Step One: My adult sister, Denise, who lived in Amarillo, would try calling the venue to see if she could get us tickets. I’m not sure if somebody thought that her being physically closer might give us a better chance, or what the logic was here. I suppose it would be cheaper for her to be on hold, since it would be a local call…and I guess she would be stationary after all, unlike the rest of us, thus allowing her to make the call in the first place.
Step Two: Dad would get cleaned up after a half-day farming in the dusty-ass fields of Kansas, and would then hop in Daisy’s much more reliable–and very, very, sweet–Eagle Vision, and then proceed to our rendezvous locale: the metropolis of Goodwell, Oklahoma, about 45 minutes into the route to Amarillo.
Step Two: Meanwhile, PKB and I would pack up in Peppermint Paddy and putt down the road to Goodwell as well…and for the life of me, I don’t remember why we all didn’t all just drive together. But we didn’t.
Step Three: Once at Goodwell, Dad would call Denise from the payphone of the lone convenience store in town, to see if we had tickets or not.
Step Four: The three of us would then proceed to Amarillo in the Eagle Vision, arriving just in time to rock out to the sweet grungy vocals of a fuschia-headed Scott Weiland & Co…
Um…Step Four of course was the contingency, depending on Step Three to come through with tickets for us.
Well, as you probably have guessed by now, this is not the story of “that one time I saw STP live.” Nope, nope, nope. The one time the Universe shines kindly on me, in whence Dad actually agrees to one of our dubious schemes, it has to turn right around and deny us with a sold out show.
Or, as Hercules would say:
“Welp, what do we do now, Dad?” I inquired, kicking stray rocks in that Goodwellian parking lot.
“Well, boys, I need to go take care of some more farmy-type stuff while I have the daylight, I ‘spose…you got your truck, so go do whatever you want for the rest of the afternoon, and I’ll see you at dinner.”
“Whatever I want, you say? Hmmm…interesting…”
“Ok, see you later, Farmer Bob!” unlike me, PKB wasn’t one to mince words.
Well, I’ll spare you the details (I mean, haven’t you suffered enough already?), but let’s just say, yadda yadda ya, and that’s how I ended up in a McDonald’s bathroom in Guymon, Oklahoma, getting my hair dyed a not-as-bright-fuschia-as-a-grungy-sixteen-year-old-would-like by his best friend.
Later that evening…
“What in the funk?!? Dammit, son, why is your hair pink?” my old man demanded to know.
“It’s fuschia, Dad. Or at least it was supposed to be…”
“Oh, your ass is going to be fuschia once I get done bustin’ it! Dammit, boy, what’s wrong with you?”
“Look, I’ll be leaving for California in a few days, so you won’t have to worry about the corn or the wheat or some random cows seeing you with a pink-headed boy in your pickup, heaven forbid…”
Later that summer…
“Welp, here I am at the Amarillo airport to pick up my youngest child…I hope he has literally outgrown that pink hair of his…” Dad no doubt thought to himself as he waited at my gate–remember when you could still do that?–ever so patiently.
“‘Tis I, the Noble and Beloved Son!” I proclaimed when I finally stepped off the plane.
Dad just stood there for a moment, taking in the sight of my hair, which by now had grown out about an inch and a half of blonde roots. Oh, yeah, and that half inch of pink hair I had at the beginning of summer? That was now a half inch of orange tips, thanks to the SoCal sunshine.
Dad just buried his face in his hand.
“Cheeses H. Crikes,2Actually, he would have said something more like “Jesus H. Christ” but I’m trying to keep this story Mom-friendly somehow you look even dumber now, son…”
The point of the story is that another fantastic perk of being blonde–male or female–is that you have a blank canvas right there! Sitting on top of your ol’ noggin’! Just waiting for Teenage You to paint a picture for all the world to see! One that is an expression of your True Self, your Inner Soul!
Or, as in my case, you can vandalize it with a spray-painted message to your loving father that simply says “Suck it, Dad…”
Content created on: 27/28/29 January 2023 (Fri/Sat/Sun)
Footnotes & References:
Crazy all that we went through before cell phones. My favorite example is when we were at the amusement park, and the group spread out around the park, so we needed a way to all meet together for lunch. So the plan was to meet at this place at 12:00. Of course it never worked out because we were stuck in a line for a ride, or weren’t paying attention, so inevitably there was worry, confusion, anger about the group not meeting at the particular time.