The other Halloween post

I was standing there, changing Hyrum's diaper and asking him to identify the pictures of the latter-day prophets we have on the wall there when I was struck by the thought that my beard looked a little bit like Heber J. Grant's. I'd always liked Pres. Grant - the stories I'd heard of him anyway - and I decided it might be fun to go as him for Halloween.

There was just one problem: Heber was largely bald even as a young man. That seemed to imply that if I was going to do this properly, something had to go.

I had intended to get my hairs cut [yes, I'm anticipating your age old joke] before we left for Italy in early September. Here it was mid-October and I still hadn't gotten around to it. My hair was simply unmanageable and it was bugging me no end at night as it bunched up behind my ears. While it wasn't the longest I'd ever let the hairs on the top of my head get, it was definitely the longest I'd gone between haircuts - something like 3 months.

Wouldn't it be nice to just get rid of it all?

I got out my beard trimmer and whacked the whole thing down to a semi-manageable size... and prepared for the worst.

That's why we're hosting this pledge drive! If we receive pledges of at least $1000 by October 30, we will not make Derrill shave his head. And you'll get a free tote bag, paid for out of the funds you donated to us, making your gift of $20 really only a gift of $10 and that's not very efficient is it, but we're smooth and smarmy public radio. Paid for by suckers like you.

Will he do it? Can we show you such carnage? More after the fold:
Yes, we can! And that's why you should support public radio, to prevent atrocities like this one.

 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Mommy?

Another quick story from the history books needs to be interjected here. During my freshman year at BYU, I was awakened by some noise down the hall.  Some guys had decided to have a head-shaving party. They invited me to join, but I said they looked ridiculous and I wouldn't. One of them was so pumped by this act of daring and rebellion that he head-bopped the smoke colored window in the ironing room where they had been shaving. SMASH! The window shattered. He was just fine, but it put an end to the party. The next day being Sunday, we had about 10 guys in the ward wearing ski caps at church because they realized how incredibly foolish they looked. I was smug.

Part of me is staring at that face and still feeling smug. Most of the time I don't feel like I've actually done it. It doesn't feel all that different, except that my hair is no longer there to warn me when my head is too close to a wall and I'm about to bonk myself. My smugness took a bit of a beating when my boss told me to keep my hat on, though.

I asked Hyrum the next morning, "Where's Dada's hair?" Without missing a beat, he looked at me, then reached out and grabbed Joy's hair. Mama took it!

So here are Heber, his pioneer wife, and his horse visiting his brother for Halloween. Good times.

... Except of course that half-bald job really looks awful. For one thing, I didn't leave a few hairs long to serve as a combover. I had figured I'd have to shave the rest off later anyway so it could all grow in the same size, but this really was not working. So I shaved the rest off just before church at my brother's ward, and after church went from bald-n-beard to its significantly more bad boy cousin: bald-n-goatee.

The dark side has cookies.

The first question people ask is what Joy thinks. Joy says, "I think Derrill is handsome. I don't think it's that weird to shave your head. I was a little nervous before he did it, but he's still my same wonderful, adorable husband, and I don't know why everyone's having a cow." Aside from my parents - who I haven't freaked out that badly since I can remember - anyone who has dared express an opinion shared a positive one ... including a rather large collection of women from my parents' generation. It's quite interesting. We'll see what happens at my own ward tomorrow morning.



My hair is now growing back and I look forward to having it back.