Your Old Friend Rita

Illustration credit: sitesyrup

I know I said a while back that I was going to dye my hair, but after all the tips and advice everyone heaped upon me, I decided against it. I wanted to go lighter and that sounded like too much maintenance. I'm all for fighting the frump with a fresh hair color, but not when I have to, like, fork over the money to keep getting regular root touchups.

I mean, I'm saving for a boob job, y'all.

This morning, though, I was straightening my hair. (For the record, that is pretty much the only hairdo-related thing I'm capable of accomplishing. And only with the one straightening iron I'm familiar with. Because last week my friend Trinity visited with her new-fangled In-Styler and I'm just now getting over the unfortunate neck-burn-that-looked-just-like-a-hickey. I actually thought about getting a THIS IS NOT A HICKEY t-shirt printed up.)

Anyway. I digress. I was straightening my hair this morning, and all of a sudden, up pops a crinkly gray hair. Now, this isn't my first granny-fied strand, although prior to turning the big 3-0 they were few and far between. I'm finding them more and more frequently, but today? Was some sort of cosmic joke. Like, "Surprise, you're effin' OLD!" Because after the first one, it didn't take me long to spot another. And another. And another. And ... another. WTF?!

They're beyond easy to spot in my dark hair, these wiry, crinkly omens of elderhood. They're so voluminous against the brunette backdrop that they may as well be made of LED lights. Hey, look at us! they scream. We're the precursor to arthritic hands and adult diapers! Yaaaay!

All in all, I spotted a grand(ma) total of SEVEN GRAY HAIRS. Today alone. And that's only the part of my head that I could see. I can't even imagine the oldness that's lurking in the back. It's probably freaking salt-and-pepper ... but I can't bring myself to look. I'm just going to pretend that the back of my head still looks twenty.

It's apparently not enough that I've been forced to battle with a beard ever since having my kids. Now I have to worry about going gray (at a record-breaking speed, I think). I spent years dyeing my hair when I didn't need to, just to try out different hair colors - from the experimental (albeit accidental) burgundy in eighth grade to the neon blue, red, and green streaks I sported during my high school punk phase.*

*Yes, really. **

**Don't judge.

But now that I actually need to dye my hair, so that no one mistakes me for my grandmother, it no longer holds nearly the appeal that it used to. I haven't dyed it in so long that my whole head is actually comprised of my natural color, which is a decent shade of dark brown that I never appreciated ... until it started its descent into Brillo-pad silver.

Brown-from-a-box, here I come.