Daily Newsie

Having entered as a brunette, I came home from the hairstylist today as a carrot-top. It’s part of my lifelong mission to never be boring, to do the best I can with my incredibly fine hair (fine as in thin, not fine as in fiiiiiine), and to cover up any gray hairs before they can make themselves known. I inherited my hair from my mother, who had beautifully long locks as a teenager but wore it short as she got older; in fact, I was the one who taught her how to dye her hair to cover up her grays. I was always bent over the laundry sink in the basement with a bottle of Clairol, turning my locks from blonde to orange to blue to brown. My natural hair color is a light brown — the kind people call “dirty blonde” or “dishwater blonde” — but I don’t think I’ve sported my natural color since my freshman voice teacher begged me to give the follicle kaleidoscope a rest. If I remember correctly, that was shortly before I let a boy dye it cobalt blue just in time to go home for the holidays.

Before I was brave enough to color my hair, I made do with lemon juice and Sun-In. Remember that stuff? Unfortunately, no one told me about roots and touch-ups, which is why my junior prom pictures featured a smiling DailyNewsie with pretty ringlets that were top-half brown and bottom-half blonde. That was back in the day when my hair actually reached my shoulders and I would religiously apply mayonnaise and egg whites until it slipped through my fingers like silk. (The fashion magazines I read then didn’t mention the fact that your hair would smell like potato salad for the next five days, but I coped.)

The decision to cut my hair came shortly after, if not immediately after, I managed to get a round brush stuck right at my cowlick. I was trying to blowdry while brushing to give myself a little volume, but instead twisted the brush the wrong way and had to have the brush cut out of my head. First, though, my mother coated the surrounding area with baby oil and the better part of a bottle of Show Sheen from the barn, and my brother snapped a picture for posterity. It was then that I learned to accept the limitations of my lackluster hair and to focus on what I could do; namely, dye it every color of the rainbow.

I’m not sure what my point is, but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the fact that I have red hair now, and I love it. That’s good enough for NaBlo, and good enough for me.