When this first happened, it was no laughing matter. I had to go through a strange, viscous feeling for three months with people constantly laughing at me. Well, I no longer contain any hard feelings. In fact, I now find it to be quite funny. Do you want to hear about it? I suppose I could tell you.

I was strolling down a section of a third-world-country-kind-of market place in Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia. Out here, it was 102 degrees Fahrenheit with 90% humidity on top of that. I yearned to quickly buy a cap for my required PE uniform for school tomorrow so I could escape the blazing heat as soon as possible.

It was Friday, the equivalent of a Sunday in the United States. Not a store in sight was open. All I wanted to do was purchase a cap from any store and quickly return home. After half and hour of searching, I approached a small store.

This store was a very strange store. In it were all kinds of mystical goodies. There were 8-balls, magic wands, fortunetellers, and many other kinds of fetishes. I swear I thought I felt a supernatural force present in the store. Spooked by the store and the force I thought felt, I asked the man at the counter that I was looking for a baseball cap. His mischievous look following my reply baffled me.

He guided me into a poorly lighted room in the back of the store. It didn�t look like a room where customers entered. The man showed me a slick-looking cap without a logo. All it said on it was "CAUTION: VISCOUS." Having an extremely small vocabulary and feeling extremely drowsy due to the heat and humidity, I abruptly decided that "viscous" meant vicious. Hey, that�s cute. This cap would imply that I was a vicious person. Cute. The heat and humidity was really killing me now. I immediately placed the cap on my head, scurrying out of the mall.

I boarded the air-conditioned Aramco shopping bus that was bound back to the Aramco compound in Dhahran. Boy it felt good to escape the blazing heat and the humidity. When I got home, my mom scolded me pointing at the time and pointing to the navy blue sky. After I got my scolding, I ran upstairs. Too tired to anything, I changed into my PJ�s feeling too tired to even remove my cap. The sound of the crickets outside faded and the world became dark as my eyelids shut.

"Time to wake up! You�re going to be late for school!! Do you hear me? Get up!" Six AM. Oh joy. A new week of school. I dragged myself downstairs where my mom was preparing breakfast for me.

"You should be making your own breakfast by now," she told me. "You�re 14. You have to take some responsibility some time."

"Fine," I mumbled. I had didn�t realize that I had been wearing my baseball cap since last night. I guess I had gotten used to the feeling of it on my head. I walked to the bus stop where my best friend, Gerald, was waiting.

When I reached Gerald, he gave me the usual greeting and said, "Weird hat. �Specially the words."

"Well, I don�t see anything wrong with the words," I replied. He shrugged and then we boarded the bus. On the bus, there was no more mention of the cap. I figure no one was looking at the cap.

The school bell rang and my first class was Spanish. Because wearing hats in school buildings were not permitted, my Spanish teacher, Mrs. Tacano, said, "No gorros." I nodded and tried to remove my cap. It was like pulling and releasing a rubber band, and it my cap came back with a snap.

"OUCH!!" I screamed. The whole class turned towards me. I attempted to remove my cap a second time only to get another snap from the bouncing back of the hat. This time, half the class was laughing.

A sympathetic female voice came from behind me. "I thought I saw something that looked like dried glue or gum when you lifted your cap." I got up and stood in front of the little mirror on the wall by the teacher�s desk. Lifting my cap, I saw a substance that looked like a slice of pizza being lifted with some of the cheese still attached to the whole. I assumed that the substance was some type of adhesive. Glue from a hot glue gun perhaps.

Where did this glue come from? Was it some kind of prank from the storeowner? No. It couldn�t be. I know there wasn�t anything in the inside of the cap when I bought it. I checked it with my own eyes. Once again, I tried to remove the cap. No luck. I tried and tried again with the same results. The class was hysterical now. Mrs. Tacano was getting furious.

"�Silencio!" she screamed. Mrs. Tacano then turned to me and said, "Quitas tu gorro, por favor." I explained my situation to her but she refused to believe me, thinking that I was doing some kind of joke or something. And apparently, she wasn�t pleased.

Well, I ended up in detention that day. What was I supposed to do? The stupid principal thought I was trying to do some kind of joke too. But when I returned home, things only got worse.

Situation Gets Worse

Stepping into the house, I quickly and furtively walked towards the stairs to go to my room without my mom noticing me.

"So what happened at school today?" Too late. I had to respond.

"Nothin� much," I hastily answered back, and I began hurrying up the stairs to my room.

"Come back down here! I�m getting sick and tired of your mumbling to me everyday whenever I ask you how school was. I know you�re growing older but I don�t want to lose communication with my baby.

"I�M NOT YOUR BABY!" My humiliating incident earlier at school had made me quite cranky.

"Don�t you ever talk back to me like that again, young man!!" she told me angrily. "Now go to your room!"

"Don�t tell me to GO TO MY ROOM!! That�s something you�d say to a second grader or somethin�. I�m a 14 year old! A teenager in high school! In the ninth grade! Learning advanced stuff like biology and geometry! Stuff that makes your head hurt! I�m not your "baby" anymore! Why can�t you just treat me like a teenager?"

"How can I treat you like a teenager when you still wear underwear with pictures of rockets on them?!?" Woah! This really pushed MY buttons.

"Oh yeah? Oh yeah? Well, you�re a [CENSORED]!!!! My mom gasped.

"Where on earth did you learn to speak like that? Don�t you EVER dare use profanity in this household, do you hear? Now go to your room!

Unable to think up a good retort, I yelled, "NO!" And with that, I stormed out of the house and ran to the small park on the corner of the street in tears.

Strolling with the tranquility of the park, I had time to think back and examine my situation. How did I get into this mess? Principal Lou Zir was mad at me. Mrs. Tacano was mad at me. My fellow classmates were mad at me. And now my mom was mad at me. What was the cause of all this? I sat on the swing.

Perhaps it was my stupid, glutinous cap. Yes! It WAS my baseball cap! If only I could get this stupid cap off, my problems would be solved. So I decided to try anything to remove my viscous cap. To the nearest public phone I ran...

"Hello? May I speak to Gerald?"

"Sure, hold on." I curled the telephone cord in my fingers as I waited.

"Hello?"

"Gerald?"

"Oh it�s YOU, isn�t it?"

"Yep."

"Hey what happened at school today? Why didn�t you just take off your hat instead of getting into trouble?"

"Well, it wasn�t that simple."

"Huh?"

"Let me briefly explain. I bought this cap that said "Viscous Cap" on it, right?"

"Right. That was weird. People were snickering about that if you didn�t notice."

"Well, I thought it meant "vicious" and - "

"- it means sticky."

"Oh...um...anyway, the cap WAS sticky. So sticky that it was stuck to my head and I couldn�t take it off."

"Dude. Did you try any odd methods yet?"

"No. Can you help me?"

"Sure. Come to my place. It�s 529. You know the street."

After meeting Gerald at his house, we began to try using the strangest methods thinkable.

"Gerald, I don�t think this is going to work. In fact, I�m scared. This might hurt - YOW!!!!"

"Quit moving! You don�t want the nitric acid to touch your head, do you?"

"A bit of it already scorched a part of my ear! I�m really lucky that the concentration of this acid is only 50%! It would literally corrode me of if it was more concentrated!" I complained to Gerald. "And besides, what kind of maniac would think of using an extremely strong acid first? Any normal person would have used hot water, soap, and some type of detergent first!"

"Well sorry! We�ll stop using nitric acid then." Before I knew it, Gerald had was lighting a match.

"What the heck are you doing?" He didn�t respond. He just set my cap on fire.

"AHHHH!!!! What are you doing?!? Put it out! Put it out!" Gerald immediately put the fire out. "What do you think you were DOING?!? Don�t you realize how dangerous that was?"

"Well SORRY again!! I was just trying to help. What do YOU suggest, huh?"

"Something LESS DANGEROUS!! Now let me think. Hmmm...I know!!" I exclaimed. "Come on! Follow me!"

Gerald and I reached the Hills School and ran into the locker room. Coming out in my boxers ready to jump into the pool, Gerald looked at me funny.

"What are you doing?" he asked dumbfounded.

"I�m going to jump into the swimming pool. In the water, I�m hoping that this weird adhesive in my cap might dissolve." After saying that, I dived into the lap pool.

"BRRR!!!! It�s FRE-E-Z-Z-ZING!!!" I shouted while lifting my head out of the water. I submerged in the water a couple times for long periods of time feeling my hair for signs of progress.

"Is it working?" Gerald asked.

"Unfortunately, no," I told him feeling disappointed and very cold.

"Why don�t you try the Jacuzzi? Maybe you need some WARM water. Remember science in Miss Sizsippy�s class? "Washing your hands with warm water and soap helps break down the grease and oil on your hands." Remember?"

"Oh yeah." I ran over to the Jacuzzi and hopped in. "YOWWW!!! HOT!!!" I submerged in this much warmer water over and over again. "It�s not working..." I told Gerald feeling my head and cap.

"Hmm...I have an idea." Gerald ran over to the wooden wall separating the lap pool and family pool, took out his Swiss army knife, and began cutting a small hole in the wall.

"What are you doing?" I asked him as he finished his hole.

"Try sticking your head through this," he told me. I looked at the hole. It seemed like my head would barely fit through it.

"No way. I�m not doing THAT."

"Come on. You want to get that cap off, right?"

"Well..."

"Just give it a try."

"Oh, okay then." I struggled to put my head through the hole but I folded down the visor of my cap and I did it. "So now what do I do?"

"Now try to get your head OUT. The cap won�t be able to get through but your head would. That would help you separate your head from cap." I tried to do this but failed.

"Um...Gerald? I think I�m stuck."

"Hold on. Let me see if I can get you out with my knife." The knife�s proximity to me and Gerald�s not being careful with the knife scared the heck out of me.

"Um...actually...stop. I don�t want you to use your knife." Well, Gerald and I couldn�t think of any way to get my head out of this hole. So, we called security. This was indeed very embarrassing. And somehow, this spread all over the community literally overnight. Was it Gerald? No, Gerald couldn�t have told.

The next day, my head felt terrible from not having the viscous cap stuck to it for two days. All I wanted to do was take it off. The hat looked terrible. By then, it had been burned by acid, burned by fire, soaked with freezing cold and boiling hot water, and stuck in a hole in a fence with my head.

Over the next few weeks, I attempted many more odd methods such as using a blow torch (I burned my hair and PLEASE don�t tell my parents that I have a blow torch.), soaking my hair in all kinds of detergent (My mom scolded me for "playing with the detergents" when she smelled the strong odor of detergents.), using all sorts of tools like the monkey wrench on the visor (My dad thought I was crazy when he saw me using tools on my cap.), and I even tried tying a string to my cap and a door. (Slamming the door only made me fly right into it. I think my intelligence quotient has been affected. Dad says my intelligent quotient was already affected after seeing my attempts at removing my cap.)

Three weeks passed and I was losing hope. Everybody thought I was crazy. (And a good friend GERALD is. He began to pretend that HE also thought I was crazy just to protect his reputation. That jerk.) Well, I didn�t know what to do at this point. I had tried lots of things. What SHOULD I do? I looked in the mirror. Wow! My cap was in pretty bad condition. I also noticed that my hair was getting longer. It had been a week since this cap was glued to my head. I was actually planning a haircut before this happened. Now, I really needed a haircut. And then, I suddenly figured it out.

"A haircut! I got it! A haircut!" I felt my head. The glue was only stuck to my hair. "I could cut my hair and the baseball cap would come off WITH it!" I thought. I was growing more and more excited. Grounded, I sneaked out my bedroom window and ran all the way to the Al Mujjamah Mail Center where there was a barber shop. The barber looked at me funny and I told him just to shut up and cut my hair in a "buzz saw" haircut.

Well, it�s three months since this incident. Things have gone back to normal more or less. People don�t think I�m crazy anymore. Also, I discovered Gerald wasn�t a true friend which was good to find out because I was no longer blinded by his lies and made friends with this really nice person named Marty. And finally, I realized how good this new "buzz saw" haircut looked on me. Now I always choose this kind of haircut.

Ahh...the life. Everything was perfect now. I was at a carnival now. Spotting a booth that had tight shorts that said "Kick me" on the rear part, I ran over to it and purchased a pair. Eager to goof off, I put on the tight shorts over my current shorts. I felt something very strange in the shorts - something very mushy. It felt very...viscous...