Duncan had beautiful golden hair, or so his mum often told him. She was always touching it and saying how it sparkled and shone like strands of gold. Sometimes she embarrassed him right in front of his friends. "Don't you think my Duncan has lovely golden hair?" His friends would laugh and tease him all day at school.

One day while Duncan was over at his pal Ken's house, Ken said, "My mum dyes her hair. Why don't you dye yours?"

Duncan looked in the mirror. "My mum would be furious if I dyed my hair. She loves the golden color."

"So what. Don't you get sick of her always touching it and saying how lovely you look?" Ken snickered.

"I guess so. How do we dye it?" Duncan ran his fingers through his hair.

"She's got a bunch of stuff in her cabinet. Let me go and get some. Go and wash your hair in the sink and put lots of shampoo on it," Ken said. "Don't wash the shampoo out. Leave it in. It helps the color stick, or so my sister said."

Duncan washed his hair and poured half the bottle of shampoo on it.

"Found some," Ken said. "Here goes." He poured the whole container of dye on top of the shampoo. "It stinks. Oh, wait. Here's another bottle of something." He poured that on too. After it was all on top of Duncan's head, Ken mixed it all together. "Let me rub it in." Ten minutes later he stopped. "All right. Now we wait for three hours."

"Three hours? Isn't that a long time?"Duncan looked in the mirror again. "It looks strange."

"My mum always takes three hours to do her hair. Come on. We'll play some games on the computer," Ken said.

Three hours later they went into the kitchen. "Stand here and I'll wash it out." Ken took the spray hose and washed all the shampoo and dye out. Bubbles went everywhere. "Uh, um, Duncan, we have a problem."

"What? What did you do?" Duncan ran into the bathroom. "You made my hair green! I can't go home with green hair!"

"Sorry. You'd better go and see if your mum can fix it." Ken closed the door behind Duncan.

Duncan ran home. Other kids saw him and laughed at him. "Look at the martian with green hair. Ha ha ha."

When he opened the door to his house, his mum looked up from her knitting. "Duncan! What happened to your hair?"

Duncan told her the whole story. She laughed and dragged him into the bathroom. She shampood his hair and made sure all the shampoo was out. She got a bottle of blond hair dye and poured it on his head, mixing it in well with the strands. "It takes twenty minutes, Duncan."

His mum fixed him a bowl of ice cream while they waited. When she washed the dye out, Duncan looked it the mirror. "My hair is blond again!"

"It's lovely. It looks like strands of gold," his mum said.

Duncan didn't mind. He'd much rather have golden hair than green.