A woman whose hair caught fire when her hairspray-coated follicles ignited as she lit a cigarette is now a southern Indiana town's reigning "Village Idiot."

Dani Hamm earned the honorary title by getting the most votes from regulars at the Story Inn, a restaurant and bar about 15 miles east of Bloomington where she's a bartender.

The title awarded every April comes with a $100 bar tab at the rural inn.

Hamm was driving to work in February when she lit up a cigarette and then heard a "whoosh" as her hair ignited.

She wasn't injured even though she used her hands to douse her hair, which she had coated with a liberal layer of hairspray.

If any of you were in high school any time during the early to mid-sixties, you probably have similar stories to relate.

Back then, we all had bouffant hairdos the size of football helmets, and they required a lot of TLC (and hairspray) to hold in place. Our Chemistry I class required us to ignite the Bunsen burners for experiments. A girl in our Bouffant-crew (not my lab partner) could not get hers to work. In retrospect, I realize we must have been a bunch of idiots to stand anywhere near an open flame.

So the girl unwisely leaned over her Bunsen burner and turned the handle up to see why it wasn't lighting. A huge flame blossomed from the jet, and up went her hair in flames!

Luckily, we had tumblers filled with water for just such an occasion and she was doused with every cup. She walked away unharmed (except that a teenage girl in the sixties with half-burnt hair would NEVER have considered herself in any way "unharmed"), and was immediately escorted to the nurse's office. She was given detention for disrupting the class, and also for negligence in following lab procedures. (Again, this was the sixties, before lawsuits were as common as dirt, and twice as messy).

We all can laugh about it now. I thank my lucky stars for having high school teachers that cared enough to discipline us, and (in most cases) helped us survive the sixties.

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