[Crispy]

Almost all of the 100-odd Japanese exchange students at my school dye their hair. In fact, it's an easy way to tell them apart from Asian-Americans at a distance, the latter usually don't dye their hair. If it is anything like that in Japan, school regulation must be a nightmare.

[Crispy]

I dunno, I see plenty of (Caucasian) Americans with dyed hair, mostly females. I have come to accept that females' focus on their hair, which is far in excess of mine, leads them to do drastic things to "improve" it. It's not so odd, except when a whole demographic (Japanese college students of both genres) does it at once.

[cstaylor]

The school's response was to demand that she dye her hair black, but her parent's refused.

Well, it just goes to show that America doesn't have a monopoly on power-hungry, moronic school officials. I remember in high school we had half the senior class playing "Assassins", and since I was running the game with this other girl we went to the principal for permission.

He said, "only after school hours and not on school grounds"

Dumbass, why do I need your permission if we're not going to do it on school property?

Needless to say, I made the school paper after a couple of our "agents" got in a heavy gun fight in one of the chemistry classrooms... boy, was the teacher pissed.

[cstaylor]

... we had those little plastic disc guns. The game went like this: one side was terrorists, the other international police (wow... sounds like CounterStrike, except this was in 1993). The first mission: a nuclear weapon, placed at an undisclosed location (it was a bowling ball in a box, gotta use that imagination!), and one side must keep the weapon safe for a complete week. Seems that the Terrorists were smarter, and had planted a double agent with the police team, so the terrorists had both sets of clues, and got the bomb first.

We really had a good time with it... one of my better high school memories.

[Crispy]

Heh...those plastic disc guns, or Gotcha guns, or squirt guns, or anything else that resembled a gun in any way would get you suspended from almost any school in the US right quick, nowadays.

[cstaylor]

... if you're in high school, you can't have fun on campus anymore... better off bailing at 2:30 and getting together somewhere else.

That said, I'd give anything to be 16 again and do it all over... I would sleep a hell of a lot more, that's for sure.