The Mean Green Piper Machine

I should warn you ahead of time that I'm feeling frisky and have the random desire to embarrass myself. I'll be posting an embarrassing story every day this week, and I may even extend it because I have many, many embarrassing moments, but I'm not sure I'm willing to post them all. I have a few readers from my high school years, and maybe 1 or 2 from my elementary days. They don't always leave comments, and I should probably ask God to force them not to on this one. 

K, done.

In case some of you have not figured it out yet, my name is Piper. When I was born, the name, "Piper" was pretty unique and unheard of. Nowadays, thanks to shows like "Charmed" and several others, "Piper" is becoming quite popular. In fact, it's the new "Betty", the new, "Tiffany" or "Courtney". In fact, it was voted the top name of 2010. In fact, I'm lying. 

But even still, I'm hearing it more and more, and I'm a little annoyed to be frank. I like the uniqueness of my name, and I don't appreciate others copying me. Well, except that there is that part of me that thinks it's pretty cool. I mean I never knew another Piper until a few years ago. 

Now, as I'm simply walking through a grocery store, I hear comments like, "Piper, you get over here right now! PIPER get over here before I tell your daddy how you're acting!!!" I jump; I run over; I apologize to my mom. And then I realize it's not my mom, and I'm 28 years old and I need broccoli for dinner, and my husband is waiting in the car for me. I apologize and explain that I'm the only person with my name, and that I didn't know there were other Piper's. I then run out of the store in manic confusion, jump in the car, and look at my husband with tears. He knows this look, and he just smiles, picks up a pizza, and all is right with the world again. Besides, who needs broccoli every night?

But as these little Pipers will soon realize, there is a disadvantage to having such a unique name. I mean you of course take the chance at being made fun of. My husband claims all children get made fun of anyway, so he sees no problem with naming our son, "Bela Lugosi", "Boris Karloff", or "Larrycurlymo". I, on the other hand, feel people would end up calling our son, "Princess Bella", "Boris" (cause that's bad enough on it's own), and that our kid will be a stooge enough on it's own, and doesn't need a name that contains the names of all three stooges. Believe it or not though, I never really got made fun of....except for those two times...and that's what we're here to talk about, well, one of them anyway, that is, if you survived my 7 page long introduction above. 

If so, thanks for sticking around. 

If not:

*Thwwwww*

Anyway, here's what happened the first time. We'll get to the second time a little later.

It was the summer before whichever year I was in 6th grade and I swam every single day. My parents had a big, beautiful swimming pool and all the neighborhood kids came to swim! So did the teenage pedophile down the street, but that's a whole other blog post! Well, he didn't come to swim, but he did try to peek at us through the fence. That stopped when I finally told my mom about it, and she pulled a Jackie Chan and set him straight! Well, she didn't physically do that to him, although she gave him, "the look", which can physically hurt you more than Jackie Chan could ever think to. In fact, I'm convinced my mom trained Jackie Chan, solely through eye contact. Needless to day, that punk teenager never came anywhere near our house again. He was terrified of my momma! But like I said, that's a totally different blog post. 

So the thing about pools is that there is chlorine in them. A lot of chlorine! Guess what chlorine does? It turns hair green. Not just green, but alien neon green, which is probably the color of a crayon somewhere. 

Fast forward a few weeks later..

I looked much like this poor child, except that my hair was even lighter. And greener; I promise.

And that's embarrassing enough when you enter 6th grade. I mean I was shy to begin with, and on top of that, I mostly just didn't want to stick out. People didn't often make fun of my name, so that wasn't a problem. 

So, what does my name have to do with green hair?? Guess what my last name was....

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GREEN!

"Piper Green has green hair!!!!! HAHAHAHAHAH" - that's what I heard for several weeks in 6th grade. Nothing builds a girls confidence as much as green hair, and a name to match. 

And I don't wanna hear an "aww..poor thing!" Because if you're reading this, there's a mighty big chance you were in my class, laughing about the green hair!"

But there's an even bigger chance, I was laughing at it with you. 

And running home to my mommy, sucking my thumb, screaming that we had to do something. 

So I got a hair cut. 

And 500,000,000 shampoos. And anti-green treatments. And salon visits. 

And then mom switched to some sort of anti-chlorine treatment, and I was a normal teenager again. I was free to move on to other, more embarrassing things. And I was successful in fulfilling this prophesy, which we'll cover later.