SPRING CLEANING by Cora Ann Metz
Spring time. A time of change. I thought I’d do something special for myself like dye my hair. I’d tackled home dye jobs before with results ranging from reasonably satisfying to magazine cover candidacy. I picked out a new product and didn’t expect anything less.
I wanted to lighten my hair a bit, maybe a light golden brown to match my skin a little better than the black and dark brown I’d been used to.
I bought a product with a booster, a white powder (not cocaine) which I had to add to the dye mixture to “lift” my hair to a lighter color. The instructions were explicit.... I had to pay attention to the timing for the shade of lightness, then rinse out. An easy piece of cake, I thought. I mixed all the ingredients and slathered it on my hair. To entertain myself during the 20-minute wait, I fired up my computer and started one of my favorite games.
I was lost in my nip and tuck game strategy with the computer’s slight edge on me. I’d beaten it before and dammit I wasn’t going to let it put me to shame this time. I was just about ready to slam dunk it for the game point when I felt something slowly dripping down the back of my neck. Oh, shit! I raced to the bathroom and looked in the mirror, letting out a scream which scattered the birds from the nearby trees......AAAAAACCCCCCHHH! My hair was a frightening color. I looked like Carrot Top, the wacky comedian with an electrifying mop of shocking red hair, except mine was a glowing Halloween orange. I stared at myself in disbelief, wondering if my computer was in on this.
The worse part of this disaster hadn’t surfaced yet. Oh, yes, I still had all my hair; it didn’t fall out. And no, orange hair did not go well with my Black skin. The worse part, this was Sunday evening, and tomorrow was a workday.
I had to become creative and hide this major temporary flaw. I didn’t want to take sick leave, as there’s no disease called “stupid,” which is, thankfully, only a temporary condition for some of us. I could pull off tying a scarf around my head for the entire day, if this were the 60’s, but this is 2004 and I would look suspicious working at my desk with my head wrapped up. Wearing a hat all day would look ridiculous. Though a temporary fix, I brushed off the thought of shaving my head. What to do? What to do? Voila! I remembered I had an colorful print skullcap I had made for special outfits and moods. It was still stylish. I could hook it up with a color-coordinated outfit and look ethnic for the day. No one would dare question that.
I dressed for work; looked sharp too. No one said anything bad about the hat to my face or asked me any stupid questions. A couple of guys said they liked it and thought it was cute. Little did they know the disaster hiding underneath it.
But I didn’t want cute, I wanted sympathy. I wanted to share my miserable hair color with my friends near and far. I emailed them all, here in Germany and stateside. I included family too. The responses came as expected....friends (God bless ‘em) never fail to offer their shoulder even when I’ve committed some asinine crime I could have easily avoided.
I sent out this blanket email: “Does anyone out there care that I’m having a BAD HAIR DAY?” That is all. Over....... A few responses came immediately:
LOURETTA: “I care.”
DEBORAH, my niece: “You did what?????”
Of course I hadn’t realized that some of my friends didn’t even have hair anymore either by choice or a genetic defect, and probably wouldn’t care about my bright orange disaster.
From the baldies I got
LEE: “Um, how do I say this without hurting your feelings?! Sigmund Freud would say that there's a problem relating to your mother or something along those lines….Why don't you shave it off like I have. It's all the rage these days you know.”
NEIDEL: “Join us! Shave it off!”
Well, you get my drift.
As the end of the day came, I thought, “I can’t wear this hat two days in a row. Coworkers would really begin to question my fashion savvy. Let’s see, if I dyed it a darker color, not too dark, but still in the light-brown family, then maybe I’ll get the color I wanted in the first place....Of course I’d be risking losing my hair with harsh coloring chemicals two days in a row. Hopefully my hair won’t fall out.”
I bought a medium brown and followed the directions to the letter this time. Boring as it was, I even watched the clock, second hands and all, tick out that 20-minute time frame. After the process, I’d finally reached a pleasing shade, a golden brown which matches my skin perfectly (I think). I was happy with it, got a couple of compliments the next day from guys, no less (gotta love ‘em). But there’s one sad irony to this, pardon my pun, colorful tale: I’ll never be able to duplicate this color again, unless, of course, .......
