Tuesday, October 23, 2007

gray's anatomy

It all went down ten years ago.
I was leading a prayer circle at youth group.
One of the youth kids looks at me and says,
"You have gray hair!"
"What?"
And a that, he pulled a longish gray hair from my head.
I still have not forgiven him.
One, it ruined prayer time....
all the other kids started examining my head.
Two, for actually pulling out a hair from my head.
And three, he brought to my attention the fact that I HAVE GRAY HAIR.
(Side note: being a youth group worker is not for the faint of heart.
If you have adult acne, 10 extra pounds, a largish nose, you may want
to consider working with the seniors. They are more forgiving.)
So now I am in my thirties and
it is not one but many longish gray hairs that I am battling.
This weekend I noticed the battle is thickening.
Not only is the hair gray. But the texture is changing.
I happened to glance at myself in the mirror and
noticed that pulling out of my messy bun,
over both of my ears at different levels,
were two clumps of gray hair, curling up like little afro puffs.
Have I mentioned to you before that I have STRAIGHT hair?
Apparently, the gray has decided to change it up a bit.
When I pointed out this curly phenomenon to Scott,
he couldn't look directly at me.
When I said,"Do you see this? This...this....craziness?"
He refused to answer because he said it was like one of those
lose/lose questions that girls ask guys like,
"Do my jeans make me look fat?"
So I am off to get my hair colored this morning.
I have always done highlights but I think I may go dark.
Just for fun. But then I wonder will it make me look sallow?
Will it bring out the purple tinge under my eyes?
Or will I look more natural since it will match my eyebrows?
Or will my bangs run into my eyebrows and
make them look more bushy than they already are?
Should I go brunette, sandy blonde,
or embrace a chocolate brown with reddish undertones?
Don't know.
All I know is that if I was supposed to be gray,
there wouldn't be such a wide array of luxurious hair color
to be tried out and applied to my hair.
And that brings us back to prayer.
It always best to pray before your hair person applies said color.
I leave you now with some excitement and little fear.
And the hope that when we chat next,
the world will be a little brighter, the peppermint jojo's
will have arrived at Trader Joe's,
and there will be no more gray.
For a few months anyway.