I killed Barney
“Please come over and dye my hair purple” I excitedly texted my colorist. He texted me back “Sure”. So he comes over Friday afternoon and applies purple color to my hair. Now I am fearless when it comes hair color. My tresses have been pink, purple and blue this year. I thought since I didn’t have to travel until mid-September, I could have a little fun with my hair color. Well…it turned into a purple nightmare! Holy Purple Rain! I killed Barney and the splatter of his purple DNA was all over the bathroom and all over me. I wont go into grapey great details about what happened but suffice it to say, my hair guy left me and told me to wash my hair in 30 minutes.
Looking in the bathroom mirror, I think, this looks awfully dark, like “Grape Ape” dark but I don’t think much of it. I go in the shower, rinse out my hair with my eyes closed, only to open them seeing nothing but PURPLE! SOS! I have fallen into a bottle of Welch’s Grape Juice! The entire shower is purple, my hands are purple, and my body is purple. Holy Eggplant! This is insane. I dry off my hair. The towel is purple. I look in the mirror and my entire face is purple. It’s as if I am in the movie “Carrie” but the blood is violet! I am Smerf of a different ethnicity! Holy Smicker’s!
I am worried about my skin but more concerned that I am going to have to replace the entire bathroom. How am I going to tell my friends I need to cancel plans with them because I am purple? I have no idea what to do. I take some Tide laundry detergent into the shower and wash my hair. The purple floodgates reopen. I fill the sink with hot water and Tide. I begin vigorously rubbing my face with a washcloth. It’s working! I scrub and scrub and my skin slowly until it goes from cabbage to violet and then fades into a reddish-purple, sensitive mess. I use bleach to clean the bathroom and I just know if the forensic investigators came and sprayed that stuff, like they do in a murder scene, the entire bathroom would reveal all of the Barney’s DNA. Thank God the bleach works and I didn’t have to pay for a whole new bathroom. …Any plum pudding, I go out with my friends that night and we have a great time even though my hair looks like a Now or Later.
The next morning I wake up in a purple haze and my nice white pillowcase is covered in purple. I go to the bathroom to look at my hair. Ugggghhhh. I grab some Dawn Dishwashing Liquid and I wash my hair 3 times. My body is now purple again and once more, I have to scrub it with Tide.
That’s it, Alice Walker didn’t write about this and Oprah isn’t here to star in this movie. I am done! I call my friend who cuts my hair and I ask if she can help. She says yes.
After several hours, empty bottles of clarifier and toner, we lose the war on color correction. My dear friends did everything they could but it was a lost cause. I was tired and more than anything my hair was tired, broken, damaged and appeared to be some indescribable shade of yellow. I walk down the street with my yellow head down crying the entire way home. I get home put a hat on and cry more. I wasn’t just crying about hair. There were some other issues I wasn’t letting go of like the boxer shorts guy who dumped me.
My girlfriend came over and just to affirm me, I took off my hat and a slight gasp escaped from her mouth. In that moment, I made a decision. The minute I made this decision, I felt so much relief. I had no idea how it was going to turn out but I didn’t care and that just made me feel so happy and free.
As I looked in the mirror after shaving my head, I was reminded that often, the crap that I think is important, the crap that I let get to me, upset me and worry me doesn’t mean a thing. I am fortunate that I had a choice to go bald and so many others don’t for very devastating reasons. It is just hair and nothing more. It’s not my health, my friends or my family. I am constantly learning my identity isn’t in what I do, the relationship I am in, the job I have or what I look like. My identity is just who God made me.
