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SALT LAKE CITY — I goofed.
It’s not like I am a hair dye neophyte. I have touched up the occasional gray hair, and I am not going to apologize for being a man who has soaked his head in ego juice a time or two. That ship has sailed, that bird has flown, that fat lady has auditioned for "Fiddler on the Roof" and now wears Fruma Sarah's pearls.
If women can ask for equal pay for equal jobs, then I can ask for a little L’Oreal.
That being said, everything I remember having learned by using hair color (sorry, there is no manly way of saying it)in my theater days — and from having had nine sisters — apparently went out the window several nights ago.
While cleaning out the bathroom cabinet, quietly so as not to awaken my wife at 1:00 in the morning (have I mentioned that I am a night person?), I found several leftovers of hair dye. I don’t remember why I saved them. I do collect small containers.
However, I discovered that there wasn’t enough in either of the bottles to substantially abbreviate a hairdo — so, I combined them, like the handy man that I am, and rubbed the mixture into my hair just to freshen it up.
No, I’m not an idiot, and I usually don’t just soak my hair in acid willy-nilly. I always look the labels over on my collectibles to check for compatibility or combustibility (Yes they were, and no they weren’t — compatible and combustible).
My fool-proof way of deciding a course of action, when there are no discernible instructions, is an olfactory once over: I took a sniff and got a not unpleasant odor of feet, paint remover and wet dogs.
By this method, I determined that the product was probably a little weak — being that it had sat for months underneath the flower and garlic-scented aftershave my kids got me for Father's Day in 2008.
So far so good. Once the dye was applied, there was still a cabinet to clean and stuff to put back into said cabinet. Then I saw that the stained glass window I was working on needed more color, and I busied myself like someone who had consumed too much Diet Coke too late in the evening to go to sleep on time.
About an hour later I showered to prepare for bed. Lumps of black ooze melted off me and slid onto the tile flooring. Up until that point, it had been a fairly productive evening.
My hair is usually touched with a lovely soft gray that gives me a certain "je ne sais quoi" that can be unexpectedly charming — sort of like Pepe le Pew in a zoot suit.
However, at 2:30 that morning as I stepped out of the shower, a dank and menacing cloud developed — one that has since become known to my immediate family as the bouffant of darkness.
My hair was the texture of weeds on an Idaho ditch bank and the color of burnt meat by the light of the moon. It was seven shades darker than it was when I played Bernardo’s incredibly tanned but mute friend, Magnolio, in "West Side Story."
Still a bit hyped up, I went to bed and told myself everything would be better in the light of day.
When I woke up the next morning there was no light of day. I thought I was dead. All the light had been sucked into my hair and disappeared like space stuff into a black hole.
I felt my way around in the dark to find a lamp and dragged it into the bathroom so I could see how bad it was. Several minutes later, when my hair had absorbed its fill of light and there was some left over for the room, I saw.
It was bad.
Now, I know the rules of altered-theater-hair-in-real-life from my acting days. When I was cast in "The King and I," I shaved off all my hair but for a side ponytail. When it didn’t grow back in a week (shock!) I told people I donated my hair to the starving people in Africa.
When they wanted a blond Lance for "Camelot," I complied. After the show, I let it slip that I had just finished filming a Bon Joviee video. That I can’t spell Bon Joviee should have been a giveaway — but no.
When I got a disco-perm for "Oklahoma" (Curly, you know), I was shy and a little embarrassed to admit publicly that I was undergoing shock therapy for my “condition."
"Saturday's Warrior," the movie? As far as outsiders knew, Tod's celestial mullet was grown to cover a goiter scar on the back of my neck.
Basically, my theory on self-induced bad hair is this: Lie. Lie like a rug on a bald man.
So, when I get up this Sunday to lead the choir looking like Elvis' evil Hispanic twin, Ernesto, I will keep my chins up and blame it on my daughter.
And if I have to cut all my hair off because I am scaring the Primary kids, I will pass out cards with my bank account listed so that people can donate — if they are able of course — to my special fund.
You know, the fund to parlay the cost of shaving my head and having it examined.
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Main story: Fruma Sarah just saw my hair. (Photo: "Fiddler on the Roof", United Artists)
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*Davison Cheney writes "The Prodigal Dad" series every week on ksl.com. See his other writings at davisoncheneymegadad.blogspot.com.**
