Flashback Friday: Blond Cliff?

I'll start off with stating the obvious. Cliff has a head full of dark hair. Growing up under the Texas sun (playing and swimming outside all day) often meant brighter blonde hair for me in the summertime. I didn't realize it had the same effect on darker hair. Well, at least that's what was thought at first...

The summer after his high school graduation, one of Cliff's jobs was cleaning the pool at a nice apartment complex a few mornings a week. His hair seemed to be a little lighter every afternoon that I'd see him. However, it was quite gradual, so I didn't think anything immediatly (kind of how my baby has grown up tremendously, but I don't realize it until I look at his pictures from this past year). I mentioned it to Cliff, and we concluded it must be the sun (but it seemed too dramatic to just be the sun).

Before we knew it, his whole head was about 10 shades lighter. It kind of reminded me of the dark head Franklin High School football players that bleached their hair. Each time my high school football team played Cliff's team, all our guys would bleach their hair (it was a football tradition every year for the rival game). It was kind of fun to look down on the field and see a line full of bleached heads. However, the majority of the team had dark dark hair, and therefore, it often ended up more orange.

Anways... Cliff finally went into his mom one day and said, "Mom, I think I'm sick or something. Look at my hair."

She then laughed and responded, "Have you been using Clay's hair gel??" (Clay is Cliff's little brother who is currently in Argentina serving a mission for our church).

Cliff said, "Ummm, yeah."

"Haha. Clifford, his hair gel has sun-in in it!"

So Cliff had slowly been bleaching his hair with Sun-In Gel. I tease him all the time saying he was doing it on purpose, secretly wanting to become a blond (which totally bugs him).

Here's the beginning of it (above). I wasn't purposly taking pictures of the progression, it just happens that I'm flash happy and have always taken a bunch of pictures, so I was able to go back and find pictures from the exact time.

Here comes the blond....

And there you have it!