The Conclusion of The Hair Story

Well, a good night’s sleep did nothing to change the color of my hair. Ellie woke me up as usual and as I got her ready for school, she said, “Mommy, it looks like some of your hair doesn’t have any color on it.” I looked at her. “It didn’t work,” I said. “Eat your cereal.”

I called Nana’s hair salon because it was the only one around that I had any confidence in. (Get it, Nana?) Probably on the power of Nana’s repeat business, they fit me in at 1pm that day. Unfortunately, I had been scheduled to volunteer in Ellie’s classroom that morning. Oh, how I did not want to go. I could only imagine what sorts of unintentionally cruel questions a bunch of 6-year-olds would have for me. But it turned out that they only gave me a few double takes and one girl asked me if I colored my hair. None of the screaming or crying or throwing of erasers that I had expected.

After volunteering in the morning, the minutes dragged, but 1pm finally arrived. I was not a minute late to my appointment, and when I walked in, the ladies there just looked at me. They knew. I ran my hands through my hair.

“I made a mistake,” I said. “Can you fix it?”

Nicki was assigned to be my savior. She looked at me with absolutely no expression on her face and led me down the stairs to her station. She sounded Russian. She handed me a smock.

“You put this on. I must take it out, I cannot color on this, it is too bright. The color will show through. I take it out. You go upstairs, tell her shampoo. No conditioner.”

I bowed my head, trudged back upstairs and startled the manicurist as I walked by her.

When I came back with my clean but still-stained hair, Nicki sat me down in her seat and globbed on the foul-smelling goop that would strip the color out of my hair. The manicurist had moved to her nail station across the room from us and she sat talking to her client as she set up her bottles of polish. She also had a Russian sounding accent. She kept glancing over at me as she talked until she finally couldn’t take it anymore. She yelled at me over her client’s head, “You go to Dominick’s?”

“Yes,” I said sheepishly. “I went to Dominick’s.”
“Never again,” she stated.
“Never again,” I agreed.

The manicurist’s expression softened and she smiled a little bit. “It’s okay,” she said, “You are not the first one. You won’t be the last one.”

So, Nicki and I settled in for the long slog of stripping my hair and recoloring it. It took an hour and a half, two long sits under the hair dryer, at least five shampoos, a frantic call to Greg to say that I wouldn't make it back in time to meet Ellie at the bus, and two full readings of People magazine. Finally, my hair was fixed. It went from crazy red to dark auburn. From blood-red to mud-red. From clownish to brownish. Okay, I’ll stop.

Seriously, it’s a very nice color. I like it a lot. Nana said it looks good and makes me look younger and it’s worth spending the money to keep your hair a flattering color. So I’ve learned my lesson and I will never try to color my hair for $3.99 again. I will splurge. I mean, it’s not like I’m spending $300 to color my hair. That’s just crazy. (Heh.)