I
can't take it anymore. Can't take the news, can't take the weather,
and I can't take looking in a mirror. Time is supposed to march on,
not sprint.
Haven't had a hair cut since March, and it's hanging halfway down
my back. Talk about split ends, these are shredded. And why is my
brown hair only on the lower half with a creepy grayish-whitish non-color
sprouting from scalp to eartops?
Hats would've worked to conceal this lopsided mess, but you can't
wear one in bed, unless you're a Dickens character. Before I hazard
something Edward Scissorhandsy that will only worsen the situation,
I'll put on my thinking cap.
Salons aren't open. Thanks Covid. It's not enough that my nails look
like something out of a handbook on how to be a Chinese Emperor, now
I can't get a decent haircut or professional color job.
Wait. I remember way back to my long-gone teenage self when we'd all
color our own hair just for kicks. Viva Clairol's Nice n Easy slogan,
"The closer he gets, the better you look." Except of course that the
imaginary "he" would have to be distanced 6' away.
Problem solved. I bought a box of color. Nothing fancy, just your
basic brown, like my real hair was when I last saw it in the year
2005.
I followed the directions exactly, except for the part where they
tell you to do a strand test first. "What a dumb idea. Who needs that?
I know what color brown is." I mashed up the stuff and slapped it
onto my head, smooshing it from scalp down to the tree line where
it met the prior dye job from salon days.
Instead of waiting the recommended 25 minutes, I waited an hour, on
the theory that waiting twice as long would make the color better.
This is what happens to someone who thinks if two aspirin are supposed
to make a headache go away, four will make it go away twice as fast.
After showering the dye out and down the drain, I couldn't see much
in the steamed-up mirror. Not at first anyway. I didn't know at the
time how much of a blessing that was. Soon there appeared a fuzzy
image who resembled an overweight Nicole Kidman, only with somewhat
less refined features. Okay, a lot less.
As the mirror sweat evaporated, I found myself looking at hair that
more closely resembled Ronald McDonald than Nicole Kidman. The shock
was such that I couldn't quickly grasp the image before me. What I
saw was not brown, nosireebob. It's the color you'd get if you married
Wilma Flintstone to Yosemite Sam. Or Hagar the Horrible.
And the lower half of hair that had been brown when I began this caper,
was still brown, though more of an excremental shade.
The only redhead I could think of wanting to become was Anne Boleyn,
but even if she did have this shade of red hair, I didn't like the
way she had it cut off.
Well, other women stuck at home in a Covid quarantine must have had
the same thoughts I did, because the stores are sold out of hair dye
now, so I own this color, for as long as it lasts and whether I like
it or not.
I'll just have to remember what former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell said:
"I'm sure people see me as a screaming redhead with a big pair of
boobs, but I like to think I've got things to say." |
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