The Salon: the Highlights

Hello again old friends. Its me, the salty and lizardy one. I have exactly as much time to make you laugh right now as it takes for my brown and gray hair to become blonde. I don't now what the heck I am thinking here because I have years of photo evidence that suggests I make a better brunette. I am not even tan (which goes better with blonde) and while my dermatologist would think that's wonderful, I think its depressing. I do not make winter white look good - and besides, dark colors make you look thinner!

Anyway, my hair stylist is probably at a bar waiting for my color to develop, because I put her through the ringer trying to help me make up my mind on what the H I was going to have her do with my hair. "do you think it will look good blonde? Can you use two shades of blonde? Why are you showing me that picture? That is brown. Ohhh, look at that model on this page. Can you do THAT?". Um yeah, if I had long curly hair, a bod that made a rock star salivate and cheekbones then maybe she could. I also told her not to take offense later when I start crying in realization that it was all a huge mistake. She smiled that "no, you aren't crazy" smile at me and went back to her 5th round of discussing the processing options which I didn't really care about. Then we picked the target picture and she went to mix dyes. At this point I saw a really cool picture of Charlize Theron, but she said, "yeah, let's just stick with this."

It wasn't always this hard. I used to make a good blonde. From my 8th grade Sun In beginnings through college and until I was about 26 when the great Jose Eber (think Liz Taylor and Farrah Fawcett's hair...during their heyday, not now) asked me if my half pink half white hair (an experiment in red which went badly wrong and which I tried to fix by dying it blonde immediately - twice) was my natural color. Jose made his people make me brunette and I didn't look back.

During my Sun In years I got it so light that my friend Greg would pull it out in math class, put it on a piece of paper and say "look, it's white!" My Mother bemoaned my dying my hair at such a young age until I stumped her by reminding her that SHE was the one dying HER hair whereas I was only stripping it of all its natural colors. My half logic somehow won that battle and I have not seen my natural haircolor since. I dyed my own hair through the years with few tragedies. One was the aforementioned pink and white stripes. And one was my highlighting error which resulted in my bangs crumbling off my head and into a sink while I was in Daytona on a business trip. I finally realized that I could no longer maintain it well myself after giving myself some rocking highlights and then realizing that I could not figure out how to cover those roots on the streaks as they grew in.

So now I pay a ridiculous amount to have it done for me. But that poor woman (if you can call this gorgeous, fun, size 0 - 2 woman 'poor') has to work for it. She has to listen to every crazy story I tell and laugh as though they are all funny, and she has to translate my hair need gibberish into something actionable. Today she didn't need to touch my head and she had already earned her money. "hi, I'm running a little late, do you want to have the masseuse give you a quick massage?" My eyes and enormous mouth screamed "OH MY GOD YES!". It was like she gave me a bag of gold.

Oh, sorry, back to the hair. I was waiting for my new beautiful shiny blonde model locks. I was getting all psyched up for the something new and different. What will they say at work? She took off the towel and I turned the iPhone camera on myself to get a look. Yup, I saw a lot of very blonde pieces and some that were less golden - we were blending. But gradually, as she cut and dried and styled my hair, I realized that it was a delightful shade of...brown. WTF? Apparently this was no shock for her, she had tried to keep my hair from getting over processed, and felt a gradual lightening was best. But I had made it pretty friggin' clear that I did not want brown. The cut was decent. I looked decent with the exception of the fact that my makeup was applied 13 hours ago and I was pretty sure that the new color made my eyes melt into my pasty face. "It's brown" I said while smiling. "I mean, it looks nice, don't get me wrong, but it...it is brown. I mean I like it. But it is...not blonde, because it's brown...". She offered me the opportunity to come back in two weeks for her to put in more highlights. WTF. 2 weeks? Am I going to need to take out a second mortgage to be blonde? I suggested that maybe I could put in a little Sun In...do they still make that? You could sense her fear. "you can come back in a couple days. You can't just jump from brown to blonde. You need to do it in stages...". It was like a hostage situation. I was threatening to hold a bottle of store bought dye to my own head. She was negotiating to save my follicles. She refused to let me be a suicide blonde. I would not dye by my own hand.

In the end, I told her it was nice. I paid my $$$ money, and I left. It is unlikely that I will find time to go back in two weeks. But I will see her again in 8 when it's time to hide the gray. In reality, the salon isn't all about the hair. It's about having 2 hours of someone pampering you and laughing at your stupid stories and looking at your cell pjone pictures and telling you that your hair is not falling out. It's about having someone surprise you with a 15 minute massage without bitching the whole time, even if you have to pay for it.

I am back in my home, and my reality. And as I rushed my not fully awake from a nightmare hysterical 4 year old into the bathroom after noticing that he had pulled his Jammie's down and was about to pee on my bed thinking it was the toilet, I caught a flash in the mirror. Look at that, a hint of blonde.