I am a shallow person. I swim only in the shallow end of the
gene pool and you know what? It’s exactly where I belong.
I am a shallow person. I swim only in the shallow end of the gene pool and you know what? It’s exactly where I belong. Oh sure, there are days when I’d love to be a deep thinker. When friends call and ask what I’m doing, I would love to be able to say, “Oh, I’ve just been solving world peace, figuring out how to end famine and knitting booties for the unprivileged children of whatever nation Angelina Jolie is visiting today.”
In reality, I’ve probably spent all morning trying to figure out how to make it look like I’ve scrubbed the bathroom, without actually doing any scrubbing.
But recently, my shallowness took an even shallower turn. Of course, most people did not think it was possible for me to wade any deeper into the shallow gene pool of life – but it is. You see, recently I suffered an indignity that happens to all shallow women at one time or another.
I got a bad haircut.
Actually, I didn’t just get a bad haircut. I also got a bad hair color. And by bad I mean, “hide my head under a hat until the color grows out” bad. The kind of hair color that – when coupled with a horrific cut – makes you stay in your house for months.
Yes, I am that shallow. Because I’m telling you – I stayed in my house with my scary hair hidden for days. Yes, I know I’m taking shallow to new depths – so to speak. But I couldn’t help it. My hair was AWFUL. It even frightened me. Every time I passed by a mirror, I’d wonder who was staring back at me.
It didn’t start out that bad. I went to my regular stylist (who is now my former stylist, in case you were wondering). I sat in the chair. We joked. We laughed. We sipped coffee. And then she said, “What are we doing today?” And I replied, “a little bit darker for winter.”
Little did I know that in stylist speak, “a little bit darker for winter” really means, “please give me a very dark red color that is not found in nature or indeed on any female head whatsoever.” Because that is what I got. My head glowed red. It was also very, very dark. I looked like a vampire. Without the fangs, of course.
Now if that wasn’t bad enough, I also asked for the same haircut but with a bit of razor cutting on the ends. You know, like the bob that Madonna has. Now, if you don’t know what this looks like – you’re not alone. My former hairdresser apparently had no clue, either.
I know this because she gave me a cut that can only be described as a 1970’s anchorwoman hairdo complete with a head so full of hairspray no self-respecting hairbrush would penetrate it and no sudden hurricane-strength gusts of wind would move it.
Yes, I was a helmet-head. A glowing red, vampire-like helmet head. Now do you see why I swim at the shallow end? We glowing helmet-headed people are stuck there because nobody in the deep end of the gene pool can stand to look at us.
Now at first I thought I could hide it. After all, I don’t usually use an entire can of super-hold on my head. Turns out, I was wrong. The haircut required my floppy hair to be so poofy that I needed to shellac my hair together to get it to look like anything resembling normal.
So I resorted to the tried and true for the hair-challenged people of the world. A baseball cap. And that would have worked except that this is the season to be jolly. And in our house, being jolly includes sending out Christmas cards with family photos inside. So I had a choice. A family photo with me looking like a poofy-headed hostess of late night horror shows or me in a baseball cap.
So I did what I had to do. I phoned an equally shallow friend who got her hairdresser to fix me. Well, as much as he could. Like Visine, he got the red out, but there was only so much he could do for my helmet head.
So this year, if you get a holiday card from me, you’ll know why the picture is just Junior and the dog. Because I’m treading water in the shallow end, waiting for the anchorwoman look to grow out.
Laurie Sontag is a Gilroy writer and mom who wishes parenthood had come with instructions. Her column is syndicated. She can be reached at la****@la**********.com.
