Me, big hair, Frank and a plastic coat hanger or...

...why horseplay at work is expressly forbidden and says so in the company safety manual.

I have a big head. There's no escaping it. There's no playing it down. It's not like having a big butt. You can maybe fool yourself into thinking your butt really isn't so big but with a big head, you can't be in denial and everyone knows you've got one big ass head on your shoulders.

And I'm okay with that. I tell myself that having a big head is good and is necessary to hold my ginormous brain. *snicker*

Now couple my giant Celtic melon of a head and hair from 1991. Big head, bigger hair to cover that big head. My hair was permed, teased, fluffed and sprayed into ozone depleting order with a can of Aqua Net being used up every three days. Loni Anderson in her heyday didn't have hair as helmet-like as mine. In a word it was "foofy". See, Barefoot? Told you foofy wasn't too far from wrong.

At that time I worked in customer service for a power company. Across the aisle from my cubicle was a guy named Frank and he was one of my favorite people. He looked uptight and rigid on the outside but inside was one of the funniest people I've ever known. He could make me crack up at the drop of a hat and it was his mission in life to drop that hat as often as possible.

Frank was fascinated with my big hair. Fascinated how I could get it fluffed and sprayed into dramatic heights and he often claimed that I must be stowing a cat up there. Few things would make him roll is eyes faster than me fussing over my hair.

One afternoon when business was a bit slow Frank took on the notion to crack me up while I spoke with customers. I was in conversation with a customer when I heard a "Psst! Kim! Kimberley!". I looked over to see Frank pulling a plastic coat hanger over his head and back off again while he whispered to me "Bet you can't do this!".

Not one to back down from a dare, I finished my phone call, put my phone on stand-by, rolled my chair over to his cubicle and grabbed the hanger from his hand. I figured it was going to be a tight fit but I was up for the challenge. I was going to not only get that coat hanger over my head and back off but get it around my giant hair without getting one strand out of place.

I sized up the hanger, got a mental picture of my head, gave the hanger a bit of a tug at the bottom and began to slip it over my head. Slowly, slowly I eased it down, avoiding my hair in the process. "Hey!", I thought to myself, "This is easier than I thought it would be!".

Snap! At the moment that the hanger was clearing my forehead the bottom part of the hanger broke in half and in doing so slammed me right square on my left temple.

Ever faint? Ever nearly pass out? Ever know you're losing it and are helpless to gain control of yourself? It wasn't the pain that was concerning me - it was the fact that not only could I see stars but everything around me began to become blurry and it felt as if I were falling down a well.

"Kimberley! Kimberley!" I could hear Frank's frantic whispering of my name but I didn't know what it really meant. Answering him seemed logical but I didn't know how to do it. I wasn't even sure how my mouth worked or if I knew what words were. All I knew was sound was becoming more distant, the desk and computer I was staring at began to swim before my eyes and I felt like I was on a very small boat in very rough sea.

And then as suddenly as it came everything snapped back into order. Voices became normal and objects around me righted themselves and I became aware that I was staring straight ahead with my mouth gapped open as I held a broken plastic coat hanger around my head.

Suddenly the absurdness of the situation dawned on me and I began to laugh. I heard a wooshing sigh of relief from Frank and he began to laugh as well saying "God, I was about to piss my pants laughing but I didn't dare because I thought you were going to keel over and I was going to have to explain to the safety department why you were unconscious in my cubicle with my coat hanger around your head!".

About a year later I was attending Frank's wedding. It was a lovely day and as the ship were his reception was being held sailed down the Potomac I had complete strangers introduce themselves to me and then add "You're the one who nearly knocked herself out by pulling Frank's coat hanger over your head, aren't you? Hey, your hair really is big!".

Nothing like being infamous. And having indestructable hair.