This Old Hag

The grand experiment begins tomorrow. I got my first gray hair back in my undergrad days. A friend noticed it and asked me if I wanted her to pluck it for me. NO! I need every strand of hair I can get. Even in my mid-40s, it's baby fine and limp. In my late 30s for perhaps 2-3 years I let the guy who cuts my hair bleach golden highlights in it to make the gray blend in. He did a really great job with none of that weird streaky look that so many people end up with, but at $130 a pop, even getting it done 2-3 times a year instead of every three months was insane, and the fact that it took three hours each time wasn't in its favor.

So for the past five years or so, I just said "the hell with it," and let the highlights grow out, and the gray back in. Even now, it's probably less than 5% gray, so it's not a big deal, but it is annoying inasmuch as most of it's in my bangs or right around the top of my head where it's most noticeable. Time to try a home dye kit. Semi-permanent color to not last more than a month before washing it out. Will not lighten hair, but will nail the gray. Years ago when I told the guy who cuts my hair that I was calling it quits with the highlights, I said to him "If it really starts bothering me down the road, I could always just try a semi-permanent dye a shade or two lighter than my own color, that won't bleach anything." He nodded in agreement. So . . . I'm on the right track trying this.

What shocked the living daylights out of me was that when I visited the Clairol and L'Oreal websites to do some research on brands and shades, six out of seven considered me a dark blonde when I held my hair up to the monitor to compare with their samples. The seventh conceded that I could be considered an ultra-light brunette or a dark blonde. All the brunette samples against which to compare were darker than my hair.

I admit it's a hard to define hair color, but I always considered myself a brunette. In fact, I laughed at a secretary I had back in the mid 1980s who called me a blonde, thinking she's Puerto Rican with really dark hair, so to her, I probably do look like a blonde. Apparently, I look like a blonde to the hair color "experts" at the two main companies in the U.S. as well. Granted, it does look dark blonde to me in the middle of summer after many weekends on the golf course, but in the dead of winter . . . c'mon!

The funniest thing of all is that SJ is an expert on hair dye, and I had to calm his fears that I'd come out looking like a honey blonde. Not a chance. Not with this semi-permanent stuff that won't bleach out the exisiting brown. He had to read the label for himself to be sure, before heaving a sigh of relief. File that under "precious moments."