Confessions of a Hair Spaz

I am a hair abuser.  I have subjected myself to more home color treatments and hair "trims" than I'd care to admit.  You'd think I'd learn.  But I committed another no-no just this week.

Turn the clocks back in time:

It all started when I was eight with a full-on epidemic of hair loathing.  My towheaded curls had darkened into a mass of thick, unruly, mouse-brown frizz in the course of a winter.  No amount of sun during the next summer could ever lighten that sad color.  I was fated to have hair of mediocrity for what seemed like the rest of my existence.

Cut to the summer I turned seventeen.  My sister, Sharon, convinced me that it would look awesome if I frosted my hair (this was the early 80's, mind you).  If I remember correctly, she had never tried this on anybody else, not even herself.  I was her maiden voyage into the world of DIY hair alteration.  She was a nurse, after all, so who better to trust?  The result was not quite what either of us expected, as she went kind of heavy on the strands at my temples and I looked like a frosted version of the Bride of Frankenstein:  The Teen Years.  I think the span of time after that debacle has been psychologically buried in a post-traumatic amnesia kind of way, since I can't remember how we dealt with the results.  I think I may have just resorted to looking stripey for a long time. 

Oddly, even with the results of my first hair-altering experience, I kept experimenting.  And through my late teens to early twenties, lots of different colors sprouted from my scalp, none ever close to my natural color.  And all done in the confines of my own bathroom-salon. 

I went through a good, long span of time after that when I would only have my hair colored/highlighted professionally.  That was good.  My follicles needed time to regroup after being abused by ammonia every six weeks.  But then with pregnancy and babies came very little time spent doing anything for myself, and also the definite banning of all hair coloring.  My mouse-brown came back with vengeance.  Oh, the glory of blah-ness.  Eventually I welcomed L'Oreal back into my routine because there was no time to get to the hair salon.  The worst was when our son was only a year old and I decided to give my look a boost.  I was going to go platinum.  As I was rinsing my hair in the shower after keeping the bleach on for what seemed like five hours, images of gorgeous blond locks played in my head.  Jay walked in, caught a glimpse of me and started laughing uncontrollably. 

"WHAT?!!" I bellowed. 
  
"You look like a clown!" he spat out, in between choked-back tears of laughter.

It was true, my hair had turned bright orange.  That was a baseball cap day until I could get to the drugstore for some emergency supplies.  Ironically, that wouldn't be until later, because we were meeting my hair-frosting sister and her husband for brunch in only a couple of hours.

I could go on with tales of mortifying hair blunders, but I will stop for surely the reader has gotten the idea that I would have learned by now that such enterprises should be left to the professionals.  Deep down, I know this.  But there are moments when the anti-social me really needs a root touch-up and has no desire to spend two hours making chit-chat with a person with whom I am only fairly acquainted.  That was me earlier this week.  And so this was guiltily purchased:

When will I learn?

"It's only for a quick touch-up," I reasoned to myself.

As I was applying the stuff to my scalp, I caught myself wondering when the day was going to be when I go to rinse this goop out and all of my hair falls off with it.  Coincidentally, as I was rinsing my hair, a rather large hunk of blond was left in my hand after running it through.  Uh oh.  I am now waiting to see if more keeps coming out.  Hopefully not.  But if you happen to see me looking rather stylish in the latest millinery, you'll know why.  And maybe I will have learned my lesson.  Finally.