True love. When I was in high school in the throes of new-found hormones, love meant a stomach that filled with a thousand beating butterflies at the sight of the unattainable, but thoroughly hunky track and field stars. Plural because the boys who set my heart to pitty patting at the speed of light were twins. Heaven help me. Two of them. And, much to my amazement, I was lucky enough to stand next to one of them during graduation…all because I was one of the taller girls. It was the first time I blessed my lucky genes for height. I've never slumped since that day. As I recall, I made a cleverly humorous comment that they should let us tall people in the back go up first since we were closer to the sun and getting all the heat. He laughed. I’m pretty sure he laughed. For purposes of this story about love, let’s all agree that he laughed and thought I was the funniest girl he’d ever met and wondered why he hadn’t noticed me before these final days of our high school years, and gave serious thought to dumping his humorless girlfriend to ask me out on an impromptu date.
Love meant hours of listening to inspiring music like In My Room by the Beach Boys or Soldier Boy by The Shirelles. Oh, then there was the heart rendering Tell Laura I Love Her by Ray Peterson—a tragic story of teen love, poor driving, and the last words of Tommy who just wanted to get his true love a ring. Sigh…doesn’t that song just about say it all?
Now that I’m a mature adult, at least on those occasions that absolutely call for it, I think love has to do with hair. You weren’t expecting that. From track star twins to hair. This hair story better be good.
Actually there are two hair stories, but I’ll have to tell you the second one in my next post.
The first happened the day of the annual Christmas party at the company where my husband and I worked. We hadn’t been married that long, less than a year, so I can’t say that he had in depth knowledge of my sensitivities. Nor did he have any knowledge that I was going to the hairdresser with the word “change” in my head. You can feel the blood draining from your face can’t you?
Have you ever decided that you absolutely MUST have a new hairdo and you just can’t wait? I do that often. On this occasion, I had fairly long hair, which my husband loved. He also liked the color. But, like the hair-change junkie that I am, I was on a quest for new beauty.
The shop was very hip. By that I mean that most of the stylists had hair color not known in nature, wore combat boots and assorted bold jewelry, some of which was pinned through their face. Fortunately, the girl doing my hair looked quite normal. So I had complete faith in her. I really did.
Until I was sitting with the new hair color processing on my head. I had asked for something in the “auburn” realm of the color palette. But as I sat with dye saturating every long lock on my head, I looked across the sea of funky clothes and freakish hair styles and saw a girl with fire engine red hair. What if that was how my stylist interpreted auburn? I’m doomed. How can I go to the Christmas party looking like a color swatch for the local fire department?
I’m happy to say that the color was perfect. So I really trusted her when it came to the cut. I said those fateful words: “Oh, do whatever you like”, which made her very happy because most clients are very picky about what happens to their hair. Wimps.
I closed my eyes and she started to cut. I heard her say something about asymmetrical, but I was too wrapped up in the desire to have a new “look” that would just make my husband’s head spin.
Yes, it was going to spin alright.
I ended up with a very short hairdo. At least very short on one side and longer on the other. Asymmetrical. I walked out of the shop with a severe headache and the decision not to go to the party. Or work. Or anywhere that didn’t include covers or a large hat.
I was pretty close to tears when I entered my husband’s office. Ta da…the new me just stood in front of him on the verge of hair disaster collapse.
He looked up and only briefly showed signs of anaphylactic shock.
And here’s where true love kicks in.
He smiled and told me I looked beautiful. He really did. I had big fat stinging tears running down my face and he hugged me and told me he really liked the hair cut. You really have to love and admire a good impromptu liar.
I found out a few years later that my husband really hates asymmetrical shapes. He’s a symmetry-loving sort of guy…equal numbers, equal distances, hair of equal length on both sides.
But true love doesn’t worry about the shape of your hair. True love just worries about those big fat tears and makes them go away.
2 comments:
Well, it's official... John is definitely his father's son.
I, too, struggle with the "hair-change" affliction. Most of the time, my adventures in hair color/cuts works to my advantage and I'm left walking out of the salon looking (or at least feeling) like a hip, confident, modern woman who just stepped off the pages of Vogue.
However, that was not the case about 3 months ago. Like you, I felt the need to change my haircolor one evening, on a whim, and proceeded to purchase a beautiful auburn/brown shade off the shelf.
Usually, I get my color done professionally, but I had colored it several times myself so what could go wrong? Unfortunately, I forgot that I had just a tad-bit of permanent wave left in my hair and therefore my hair soaked up the color like a sponge! What I ended with was a very unnatural looking shade of ORANGE. By this time, it was close to 11:00 p.m. and our company's All Staff meeting was the following day! I rushed to the grocery store to buy a shade of "ash" brown, to tone down the brassiness of the prior coloring fiasco, rushed home and colored again. This time, I was closer to my "natural" brunette color, but what's this? Is that GREEN I notice in the undertones? UGH.
To make a LONG story shorter, I went to the meeting the next day with a headband on to hopefully disguise the terrible color and then proceeded to strip the color that weekend and recolor my hair two more times until it looked presentable (and, yes, my hair felt like straw).
And what did my husband, the love of my life, say throughout the entire experience? "I think it looks great". Ah, love!
Peggy "The OTHER Mrs. Fernandez"
Ah, that nice Sid. When Fred got an awful haircut, I doubled over laughing...although I did try and tell him it was alright. I really tried, but his hair was so bad, and he had the most pathetic look on his face. I just fell about laughing.
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