Tyler, or, how I ruined his senior year

Since our good friend Tyler is here, I thought I'd regale you with one of my favorite Tyler Stories.

Tyler is one of Caleb's best friends, and so in high school we'd hang out quite a bit. One of these times they decided that they were going to give Ty a buzz cut. They watched Ocean's 11 quite a bit. I sat on the toilet watching, since the closest I'd ever come to cutting hair was shaving my own leg, and I'll just go ahead and be presumptuous and assume that somehow that didn't qualify me. Caleb had however, so he quickly did his thing, and soon Tyler was all buzzed and stuff, feelin' pretty Brad Pitt-hot. Caleb handed me the shaver (buzzer? No...that's not right...) and instructed me to go trim his sideburns in the garage while he cleaned up the bathroom. "Uh........okay...." I stuttered, thinking surely that was something I could handle. But as I stared up at his sideburns, weapon in hand, well...I was a little nervous. I sucked it up though, turned it on, and......slipped. Slipped going UP, and using the wrong side. So he pretty much had a huge bald stripe going halfway up his head. A sideways, inverted mohawk. A landing strip for flies. It was disastrous. I don't think I've ever felt so embarrassed, so horrible, so......well, I wanted to crawl under my covers and stay there for a century or so. Tyler saw my face, and I can only imagine what he was feeling. The next few minutes were a blur, Caleb saw my butchering job and they decided they'd need to just shave the rest of his head that length. That's how bad it was. He literally looked like a cancer patient, bald, with just a glint of dark hair pushing it's way through. All I remember is Tyler saying that his mom was going to kill him, and me silently afraid she'd turn on me next.

It all turned out okay in the end, his hair grew back as hair tends to do, and Tyler decided he'd still be my friend, which was mighty big of him I think. But to this day, I still have to refer to him as the kid I butchered. "Oh, he's THAT kid....", or "OH! I remember that.....". And so on and so forth.

Most recently...

Mom: Who's going to buy your car, again?

Me: Tyler, Caleb's good friend? You know? The one that I shaved?

Mom: OH! Yeah, Tyler. He's a good kid, I like him.

Me: Yes, we do too.....