hair bonanza - the final chapter x2

i met my future husband when my hair was growing out of the buzz stage & into something infinitely less attractive. my hair was approximately 1 inch long all over with no shape & going nearly straight up into the air. i have no idea why he asked me out, but i'm very glad he did & sure enough, i managed to grow my hair back and look like a normal girl before our wedding.

i changed the color of it on a regular basis in order to get my hair fix without the drastic cutting. i had about every shade of blond, brown & red imaginable & then one day i decided to make the leap to a deep, dark brown. the shade was called "midnight ruby."

if you'll notice, my natural coloring is extremely similar to the woman in this picture, so the color was destined to look awesome on me. after a little while of that, i decided to go all the way to black. i wanted to look like an asian woman right down to my roots, so i bought a box of blue/black & became a whole new woman. actually, chris decided to join me on my black hair endeavor, so we shared a bottle & both went black (can't say we never went back though). chris looked kind of like the devil when his facial hair all freshly dyed black too.

here's a picture of me with my sister sarah where, for only a brief period of time, my hair was darker than hers. i kind of liked it being black for the sake of variety, but it was hard to maintain because my roots were dreadful when they started growing in. and unlike some people, i don't use sharpie along my root line to keep it looking fresh (ahem... sarah.. cough, cough). i also looked pretty corpsey if i didn't wear a bunch of makeup to cover the pastiness & freckles.

one night while i was lying in bed with my black head, i had the overwhelming urge to purge the black & go platinum. i wanted it to be lighter than it had ever been before & i could hardly wait til morning so i could go buy some bleach. i was just sure that it was going to be great, but alas, reality threw me for a loop. it turned a hideous shade of orange that even I couldn't live with. i cut most of it off in my bathroom that day & then bought more bleach. i believe i bleached & dyed it a total of 5 times in rapid succession over the course of a week. during that week i drove with my honey to new york for his virgin voyage north of washington d.c. we stayed with my aunt & uncle & a couple cousins. my cousin drew decided to get in on the bleaching fun, so he & i would color each others' hair at night while laughing at how it kept getting progressively worse.

then i decided that since it was bordering on intolerably horrid, i'd go to sally beauty supply & pick up a bottle of blue hair dye. i had never gone way off the natural color wheel like that & i was picturing something deep & drastic, in the royal blue family for some good shock value. alas, what i got was something more closely resembling baby bird feathers. lots of it had fallen out in the process of all the bleaching & dying and for some reason, the blue didn't come out at all as i'd envisioned it. it was like i had a sad, 4-yr-old-styled "my little pony" on my head & it had crossed way over the line to intolerable. it was time for drastic measures - i would have to shave it... again. so my cousin steve & my husband both had a go at my hair with the clippers (properly charged this time) and had a bit of fun while they were at it. here's a picture of steve giving me a sneak peek at a possible future of male pattern balding. lovely, isn't it? i believe there was also a rat tail.

this time around, my shaving experience was a bit different than the first time. this time my scalp was wounded & weeping from all the chemical abuse it had suffered in the previous week. it more closely resembled a world globe than a head, complete with oozing mountainous peaks of lava & some patches of blue for the oceans. there were some darker places where the bleach hadn't fully penetrated that looked kind of like land & some nearly white patches of fuzz that from a couple feet away could have been mistaken for cloud cover from the air.

i was visiting with lots of friends & family, some of whom i hadn't seen in years & i'm guessing that it was probably a bit of a shock for them when this bald, scabby headed woman showed up at their doors with a wink & a smile. here's a shot of me visiting with my friend cristi. surprisingly she was willing to be seen with me outside of her apartment.

it wasn't more than a month or two later that my grandfather died & i drove north again to attend his funeral. my mom asked that i please wear one of my wigs in order to not give any of the old folks heart attacks. here's the best wig that i owned during my bald periods.

it came in pretty handy when i didn't feel like standing out so severely. i was working at a retail store for kids clothes at the time & i often wore my wig to work so as not to startle the small children. i would have strangers compliment me on my great cut & expertly placed highlights. there were numerous times when a customer would ask me for the name of my hair dresser & with a gleam in my eye, i'd tell them i was my own hair dresser. then my co-workers would start giving me the look, just begging me with their eyes not to do it again, but i could never resist. i would always reach up & yank that wig off my head & expose my hideous scalp to the horror of everyone around.

ahhh, fun times...

it grew back out, slowly but surely & i managed to keep it trimmed up into something more fashionable this time around. dying it a lovely shade of strawberry blond helped take the edge off too.

eventually i learned to leave it alone. for the most part anyway. it was after the second shaving that i decided to calm the heck down & let my head be normal rather than being a gross lumpy globe. so now i just play with highlights & varying lengths. but i'll always be glad for the hair adventures that i've taken in my life. it helps me remember when memorable things happened in my past... oh yeah! the last time i saw you was when my hair was about an inch long after the first time i shaved it. gosh, that's been 14 years!