Hair

At age 58, I decided to stop coloring my hair.

I had highlights applied for years, but I hated the dull growth that quickly appeared around the roots.  (My hair grows fast as a doggone weed.)

The roots that continually grew out were brown with a smattering of gray, not bright and shiny like the highlights, but I wondered for years, would that really look so bad?  With retirement looming, I needed to reduce my expenses and maybe, just maybe, look my age.

I didn’t seriously think about making a change, though, until I was standing in line at the post office and happened to notice how ridiculous one of the employees looked.  (Need I write this story under an alias to avoid someone “going postal”?)

I had been seeing this lady since I moved here seventeen years ago and I had never been startled to see her before.  Maybe she normally wore a more age-appropriate style and color, not this long blond hair tied back in a pert ponytail, bangs down to her eyebrows.  While the hair was a cute, youthful style, this lady’s face was anything but.  The lines and wrinkles etched on her face placed her squarely in her fifties.  Brown or blonde hair with a smattering of gray would have looked fine on her…perfectly natural and what anyone would expect.  So why does her hair look the way it does?  Does she think it makes her look younger?

Perhaps an even bigger question was:  are people that shocked when they see my face?

Then I noticed a lady at the grocery store.  From the back, she looked fairly young, like a biker chick with her tall boots and leather jacket, hair black as her jacket.  But when she turned and faced me, I felt a jolt.  Her face was not young and, worse, her hair was way past needing a color touch up.  There was an inch of white (around the roots) coursing over the top of her head.  Seriously?  If you looked at her head from above, it probably looked like the back of a skunk, with the obvious stripe.  I tried to focus my eyes on the woman’s face, but they kept straying to her hair and I wondered, does she have any idea how bad that looks?

I would rather have my age be obvious at a glance than have people look, then look again, as they tried to determine from what generation I hailed.

Decision made.