Haircut Bets

I have always had this desire to have a flowing mane of hair. Unfortunately with my genetics, that is becoming less likely with each passing day. I have heard that a males hair genes come from their mothers father. In which case I am going to have a nice shiny head with a ring of hair wrapping the back and sides with extremely bushy eye brows. Funny enough in the last few months I have had a random hair growing from my left eyebrow that is exceedingly long and a different color from the rest of my eyebrow hairs. If I pull it out, it grows back really quick so I choose to leave it in and tug on it in front of people to freak them out. But I digress… the following three part story is about my effort to force myself to grow really long hair.

Part 1: Computer Science Class

Senior year of high school was a breeze for me. I had a free first and fifth period and played sports all year so my 6th period was either for practice or also open. One of my other classes was AP Computer Science with Mr. McDermott. I attended this class with a good friend of mine Joe Proja. The first 20 minutes of each class consisted of the students sitting at their desks waiting for McDermott to finish whatever it was that he was doing and then eventually he would allow us to go to our computers. During these 20 minutes Joe would take massive chews and I would generally harass whoever was around me.

One day Joe and I decided to grow our hair out. But to make sure this happened we wrote up a contract which unfortunately has been lost in the winds of time. The terms went something like this: If you cut your hair before the other you will get pepper sprayed. (Initial revisions of the contract allowed for the choice of a stun gun, the one that sticks needles into you, but we abandoned this idea.)

At some point we allowed our friend Dustin Helvig to join the hair cut bet. He was a ringer since he did not go to school, play sports, and worked at play it again sports. After months and months our hair was getting out of control. Much respect to the females for managing long hair all their life. When prom time came around, Joe could not take it anymore and decided he required clean cut prom pictures. He cut his hair in secret to make sure that I would goto prom with my hair extremely long. I even saw him that day at the flower shop but when I tried to say hi, he ran away from me to hide what he had done.

I was ready to cut my hair as it was becoming a burden while I played soccer in the hot california weather. I ultimately cut my hair several days later taking second place, meaning that Dustin had won… that bastard. We decided on a day to enact the consequences and the plan was for me to pepper spray Joe and Dustin to pepper spray me right after.

This is all on video somewhere and if Dustin V. or Zak V. could get a grip and find it in their closet, that would be much appreciated.

I stood about 5 feet from Joe and blasted him in the eyes with some pepper spray we bought at the swap meet. He fell to the ground instantly and was screaming, although not louder than the roar of laughter from all his friends! Unfortunately for Joe he had his eyes locked shut and was not able to see Dustin stand in front of me and spray this foul substance into my eyes. It is really hard to stand in front of someone with pepper spray and keep your eyes open. It hit my eyes and they immediately shut with no chance of opening for about 45 minutes. I fell to the ground and started crawling around looking for the hose which Joe was using himself. Definitely a funny site watching someone on all fours stare directly into the end of a hose that is on full blast and listen to them try to explain how much it hurts. If you removed the water from your eyes, it would hurt much worse than it did in the beginning.

We were told that highway patrol men need to get sprayed and then do an obstacle course which I find extremely hard to believe. I have also heard of stories of cracked out people pulling up stop signs from the ground while getting doused with high powered pepper spray and then still able to beat up the cops. We also heard that a significant percentage of the population are not affected by pepper spray, as well as dogs.

Part 2: Luke goes to university to dupe some newbies

Move ahead one year or so and into the dorms at University of California, Irvine. I was describing this bet to my two good friends Pat and Geoff and we decided to do the bet again. I was coming off a second place in my previous bet which taught me to never lose this type of bet again. The bet had the same terms. Geoff eventually was excommunicated from the bet after we found out that he was trimming his hair ever so slowly to make it appear that it was never changing. To this day Pat and I still think we should sneak up on Geoff one day and douse the bastard! Pat started the bet with a two month head start of not cutting his hair but he was aware of his decision.

This bet did not last that long and I was ultimately the winner. Maybe Pat can fill in the real reasons for him cutting his hair but I think it was just because he secretly wanted to experience pepper spray. Now at this point I was experienced at shooting the pepper spray. Pat stood maybe 10 feet away from me but the distance did not matter. I zapped him in the eyes with the first pass from left to right and then I wrote my name in hand writing across his forehead and mouth making sure to have complete coverage. Pat had heard that in the previous bet we had dropped to the floor and found water instantly and he chose to try and avoid doing that to one-up us. So for about 5 – 10 minutes Pat did an amazing job of pacing back and forth in the grass with his eyes shut and spewing curse words about the accuracy of my shot and anything else he could think of. I am sure if he could see, he would have been throwing punches. Pat can be aggressive and with pepper spray filling his tear ducts he was like a wounded rhino in heat. Eventually he hit the shower and we all laughed about it afterwards.

Part 3: Luke gets his revenge

One night while I was visiting my friends back in Simi Valley and playing 100 club (100 shots of beer in 100 minutes), I was describing how I had got my friend Pat to feel the pain of the pepper spray. Part of my story was how I would never lose again, EVER. I would do anything other than getting pepper sprayed. And then I said the sentence that kicked off the next hair cut bet. “I would rather eat my own shit than get pepper sprayed again!” And the bet was on between me and Helvig who had still yet to know what it felt like to have your eyeballs peed on by a volcano.

Circumstances had changed at this point. I was not playing soccer as competitively as I was before and Helvig had got himself a job at a bank. Unfortunately for him, those banker types dont look well on someone with long shaggy hair turning into a mullet on it’s own accord.

For months we had the very gross conversation of how I would perform my penalty if I were to lose. Most of the suggestions had to do with my sobriety or what I would eat for a week before. It did not matter to me because I knew I would never lose. Eventually Dustin caved and he cut his hair. I pepper sprayed him well good with an evil smile on my face the whole time. Oh the taste of sweet revenge, or in Dustin’s case, searingly hot revenge.

In Conclusion

I have pepper sprayed three of my best friends and I don’t have any regrets. I still will run like a ninny if I see pepper spray within a 100 meters though. As I write this I have not cut my hair for 5 months and my reasoning now is to look more like the indigenous Argentinians as opposed to the gringo that I am, which I believe to be working. Any challengers out there?