Hair As Emotional Barometer

My hair has its own story to tell. If only I'd let it.

I was the daughter of a woman who in my adolescence wouldn't even let me have bangs (for some reason she thought if she forestalled the in-the-eyes bangs, she could keep me from turning into a hippie. Think again). And who wasn't letting me anywhere near a box of Clairol. So my hair and I went wild the minute I hit UM at Ann Arbor. (You could have seen it coming)

And I'm feeling a bit twitchy right now.

I've had short hair, very short hair, long hair, asymmetrical hair, wavy hair, curly hair, straight hair, black hair, red hair, purple hair (you heard me), caramel-streaked hair, maroon-chunked hair.

I once spent $400 on salon color. In a three hour period. And had a minor celebrity local newscaster ask me in a restaurant lobby, "Oh, who did your hair?" My hair brush with fame. Heh.

But right now my hair is as au naturel as it's been since I got out of prison, er, left home. Shoulder grazing with bangs, dark dark brown shot through with a bit of silver and with long silver streaks at my temples. It's beautiful, really. But I didn't do anything to get it this way. And it's restless.

It's got that middle-aged yearning-for-blonde blues.

Walk down the street and you can easily identify a proto-50s-something woman. Depending on her socio-economic level, she's either got that brassy "this looks just like I had it done in a salon" reddish blonde burnt to a crisp (the unfortunate home color AND perm syndrome) sprayed stiff ear-length do. Or, as we ascend income level, it becomes the smoothly streaked chin length bob-with-bangs in a beautiful-but-not-found-in-nature ash-titanium-blonde.

(In a class by itself is the "I refuse to give up the '60s because those were my best years" 24 inches of hair-down-the-back in steel gray. Now THAT's scary. Something about the contrast of Alice-in-Wonderland length with the Aunt Bea gray is just wrong. Add a big bow at the crown and you've got that festive country-and-western look so popular at Garth Brooks' concerts.)

So, here I am with my hair begging me to let it do something BLONDE. Even though we know what can happen; only tragedy can result.

Better I should invest the $160 in another appointment with my shrink. I won't come out of there blonde, but at least only my eyes will be red.