Gray Matter

Lately I've found myself--thank God! and I was lost for sooooo long---ahem, let me try again. Okay, here's the deal. I have never really thought of myself as a decisive person, but on the career path I've chosen to take, I have to make decisions all day long. (Imagine looking at 50,000 pairs of shoes and picking, oh about 75.) Some of the decisions are good and some are not so good, but you know, if I was perfect, not even Shanta would be able to stand me, I'd be so annoying.

Outside of work is another story. Because outside of work, 99% of the time, I really don't care about the options I have, and I'd much rather go with the flow then set the course. It's just not worth the effort for me to jump start what little brain cells I have left after a day of decisions decisions decisions.

But there is something I've been grappling these last few months. I made the decision a long time ago to do something, and I'm finally ready take that leap of faith. Yes, I think, um, I'm sure, that I'm ready to stop... dying my hair! (At this point the women who are reading this may gasp. Any man reading this will probably stop reading because if they have hair at this stage in life they are just grateful. If they don't, well then this life alterating plan of mine would be just down-right insulting. Kind of like a very wealthy person exclaiming in earshot of his underpaid maid who is sending half of her salary to help feed, shelter, and clothe her thirty relatives back home in Ipoorlandia that he may have to start cutting back by selling off one of his houses, or something along those lines.)

The truth is that when I was growing up, I never ever thought I would dye my hair. Not that I was in love with the color or anything. My natural hair color, which I have not seen in over twenty years, is brown. And I didn't start dying my hair because I was tired of the color; I was just having one of those days. You know, the
kind of day when you may find your (lost) self agreeing to covering your body with raw bacon and swimming in shark-infested waters because someone suggested it and you really had nothing better to do anyway, and what the hell your life sucks and you need to do something different. Oh, I'm sorry, I thought everyone had days like that. Well, it was before I was on medication... Anyway, truth be told, it was a sucky day, largely because I was having man problems. (Man problems? Is that redundant?) NOW you know what I'm talking about. And I was in my twenties. And I just knew, KNEW, that this guy liked me, really really liked me, but because of x, y, and z, well, he just couldn't reciprocate. No, he wasn't married. But there were circumstances. You know, because if I had new and improved hair, x, y, and z won't matter because he won't be able to resist me! Was it true that he liked me or was it something my poor demented 20 year old mind conjured up? Looking back on it all, almost twenty years later, all I can say is, "Thank God nothing happened!!!"


So back to my hair. The hairdresser had repeatedly suggested I color it red, and that day, in a weak moment, I relented. Did I love the new color? I must have, because I kept dying it. This was pretty radical for me, because it really was something I had never considered before. And I am so naive. I had no idea that about 79.95% of American women already dyed their hair. I just assumed that everyone kept their natural color, except for those very obvious cases where the woman is almost 100 and has jet black hair. I'm naive, but not stupid. (OK, well maybe not THAT stupid.)

When I first starting coloring my hair it was pretty easy to keep up. (I should clarify that I don't do this myself because I can't even braid hair. I need professional help.) I'd color it maybe once every three or four months. As the years passed -- not too many years unfortunately -- before I started seeing white hair in my part. I didn't freak about it but I didn't want this Pepe Le Pew thing going on with my hair. So I had to dye it more frequently. Shortly after I got married (I couldn't wear white hair on my wedding day!)I looked in the mirror --which I should have done more often -- and what I saw reminded me of Johnny Carson's joke about Reagan not dying his hair, but bleaching his face. My face was too old for my hair! The next time I got my hair colored, I asked for highlights as well, to soften the stark contrast between red red hair and old white face.

Well, it was brown. Now it is gray. Gray gray gray! I didn't start dying my hair to hide it -- rather my hair was a . since I had a I think i After all, isn't it is a women's perogative to change her hair color?