St Baldrick’s

So, I did some fundraising for charity.  This is not something I normally do.  I’ll give money to charity, or donate goods to charity, but I rarely give my time to charity and this is the first time since boy scouts that I’ve raised money for charity.  I’ve never been very good at it.  However I had fantastic success this time.  Also, I had a good time at the actual event.

St Baldrick’s raises money for research in to childhood cancer.  I volunteered to be a Shavee, meaning that I got on stage at a major concert house and let them shave my head.  Over the last several weeks, I’ve convinced people to sponsor me and managed to raise nearly $400.  Considering I figured I’d be lucky to raise $50, I’m very excited about that.

Getting on stage and letting them shave my head was kind of cool.  Honestly, though, losing all my hair isn’t a big loss.  I mean, there’s a lot of identity that goes along with being a red head and so not having the red hair is kind of striking in that regard, but it’ll grow back and it’s not like I had long flowing locks or anything.  On the other hand, the man sitting next to me on stage had beautiful hair down to the middle of his back.  So, not only did he shave all that for this event, he was also able to donate all that hair to Locks of Love, too.  Above and beyond that, though, were the women getting their heads shaved.  I mean, a man having a shaved head isn’t unusual.  Whether it be because he’s losing his hair or just for fashion, it’s fairly normal.  But a woman with a shaved head is entirely different.  Outside of Sinéad O’Connor, you mostly only see women wish shaved heads if there is something wrong.  So seeing these young women with long hair step forward with the courage to do this was very inspiring.