The Science Lesson

There are certain things that it just never occurs to a mom that she needs to teach her 17 year old son. This morning is a case in point.

Apparently, somewhere along the way, I needed to explain to him the properties of hair dye, and that the chemicals contained therein do not sit well nor are they something you can "save for later."

This is the last year we have to endure the dyeing of the beautifully thick, dark luscious hair on my son's head. For anyone who has ever tried to take very dark hair peroxide blond will tell you, it ain't pretty. But the football team does it every year at this time for the end of the season/playoff team building thing, so whatcha gonna do?

So for the third and thankfully LAST time, Nick is sporting a pukey shade of slightly orange blond hair to school because last night the guys decided it had to be done. Please note all these other guys are ALREADY BLOND. So after running out of the "good stuff" (bought at the hair supply place) they get the grocery store brand to try and lighten it more. And since they don't use all of that bottle and Nick wants to see if it got lighter from round 2, he takes the OPEN bottle home with him, sets it on his table, and GOES TO SLEEP.

He gets out of bed half comatose and stumbles into the shower. It is only after exiting said shower and returning to his room that I hear, "MOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!!!. Can you come down here PLEASE??"

This is when I discover that he has brought his little time bomb home with him instead of disposing of it like the instructions warn you to do.

Who knows at what time of the night Mount Feria Peroxide went off, but it was already turning into little toxic globs of poo all over everything it spewed upon. And, of course, Nick has to get himself and Sammi to school.

So instead of starting work, I break out the rubber gloves and sponge and bucket and paper towels and set to scrubbing off blobs from everything in the radius. And of course, left to my own devices, that means its going to turn into a blog.

He's pretty lucky the normal piles of laundry he seems incapable of putting away weren't in the spill zone. His wallet is toast but that seems to be the worst of it. Jessie's Mac cover will need replacing (see what peroxide can do kids?), but the watch, camera, and yearbook within the blast range seemed to have survived the cleaning unscathed.

So here's the science lesson of the day, guys: the warnings on the bottle are REAL. The fumes build up and go BOOM all over your stuff -- that's physics and chemistry all rolled into one.

And some people were never meant to be blondes. . . .

I saved a spot for him, too: