My extended family has, to say the least, had some hair issues over the years. Now I know this may sound odd, but it's true. Hair, or the lack thereof, has played a key role in several family holidays and provides my dad something to poke at my uncle about while they sweat out the holiday of the moment. I can remember thinking as a child that hair must be very important, as I'd seen multiple family members in tears over various hair-tastrophies, and I knew that on Friday's, I would never be able to see my grandmother as she was always "getting her hair fixed," which as a child made me think that they must have to replace it each week. I guess I inherited some of this, as my hair has gone through a new stage approximately once per year since college. I'm currently in the preferred stage for engineers -- "don't comb it when you get out of bed."
A few nights ago, my lovely wife informed me that she had purchased a kit to do "highlights" at home, and that she might require my assistance. The last time she bought one of these kits of evil, we ended up with black dots all over the paint in our shower and on our countertop. And if memory serves me correctly, she was none to happy with the results on that particular occasion. Knowing better than to question a woman on a mission, I responded that helping her wasn't high on my list of things to do (slightly lower than poking myself in the eye), but that I'd be available in case of emergency.
At about 9pm, she emerges from the bathroom with some white glop on her hair that smelled like something with which you might clean out a toilet or sewer drain. It reeked. She plopped herself on the bed with a towel around her shoulders and informed me that the product stated that it needed to sit on her head for a minimum of 30 minutes for minimal highlights, or longer for lighter highlights. It seems odd to me that you would put a product on your head that can dissolve paint and countertops, but my grandmother is still alive after several million gallons of Aquanet have soaked into her head, so perhaps the human head can withstand more than I realize.
At about 20 minutes, she hopped up and headed into the bathroom for a look. The initial screaming led me to believe that perhaps I'd left the toilet seat up, but instead, she was screaming at her newly highlighted hair. She immediatley started trying to remove the product in the shower, and when she emerged...
Now the bruises from calling your wife "skunklady" or saying things like "that would look great if you were a hooker" don't heal quickly. Following my insensitivities, she headed out the door at 10pm to buy a hair coloring kit to redo her whole hair in her natural brown. This in itself seemed like another bad idea to me, but I stayed quiet and nursed my wounds.
When she returned, she followed all the directions on the new package, which involved us watching another half hour of TV in a caustic ammonia-based cloud with a towel draped around Erin's shoulders. When she rinsed the latest product out, I heard yet another scream. Part of me hoped that her hair had actually fallen out this time around, 'cause that there makes a stellar blog entry. Instead, her hair just turned a shade of red. It doesn't look bad, but it's definitely not her natural hair color. Apparently the second dye somehow mingled with the original dye and created this new shade.
In the end, Erin looks very nice as a redhead. And I have learned that if she reaches for hair dye at WalMart in the future, I should not say, "But honey, you looked like crap the last time you did that!" At least not out loud.
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