Two Sundays ago, about 1,000 people showed up at Velocity@Novena Square to get their head shaved for the Children’s Cancer Foundation (CCF).
I wanted to be one of them, but then I found out that I had to donate a minimum of $30 to CCF before they would even raise an electric shaver to my noggin.
According to the CCF website, this was because in previous years, people had taken advantage of the annual Hair For Hope event to get a free haircut.
And thus my devious plan to get a free haircut was cunningly thwarted.
You know what this tells me? Merely getting your head shaved for charity is not enough.
This is especially true for Singapore men, most of whom have already suffered the unkindest cut when they entered national service.
Also, nowadays a shaved head can be considered cool. Just look at celebrities like Bruce Willis and Chris Daughtry (but not Britney Spears).So how can we up the ante for next year’s Hair For Hope?
Let me share with you a story my wife loved telling her friends to show how idiotic her husband was.
One day, she returned home and was shocked to find that I had come back from the barber’s with my head cleanly shaved. At this point, her friends drew a collective yawn. “Yah, so?”
My wife then added I had also shaved my eyebrows.
Her friends squealed with disbelief. “Oh my god! Why? What was he thinking?”
My wife explained that I had looked in the bedroom mirror at my shaved head and said to myself, “I still look too good.” And so I took a razor to my eyebrows.
Her friends laughed until they cried.
Shaving your head was one thing, but to intentionally shave your eyebrows took a whole new level of stupidity.
I regretted it almost immediately. I knew the hair on my head could always grow back, but since this was the first time I had erased my eyebrows, I was afraid I might be browless for the rest of my life.
Because my wife didn’t want to be married to an extraterrestrial, she penciled in some eyebrows but that just made me look like a transvestite from outer space.
Fortunately, my eyebrows did grow back. And you know what? I’m willing to shave them and my head again – for a good cause. Plus I challenge everyone out there to do the same.
(Of course, you don’t have to shave both your eyebrows, but if you shave only one side, you’ll just end up looking weird.)
After all, don’t cancer patients in chemotherapy lose their eyebrows along with their hair? This will help us better understand the ordeal they go through.
But I’m just not giving the 30 bucks. This is how far I’d go for a free haircut.
- Published in The New Paper, 19 July 2009
