The Magician

I was working with one of my little friends this week.  We were sitting on the floor, working on a puzzle when he suddenly looked up at my head and proclaimed:

"Whoa.... look at your hair.  You've got so much gray hair in there, I think you've got more hair than my Babushka!

"That's a lot of gray," I said.

"You must be almost as old as my Babushka,"  he said.  "She's got lots and lots of gray hair too!"

"I don't think I'm as old as your Babushka, but if I'm lucky, maybe I will live to be as old as your Babushka."

He got up, and began picking up my hair and saying "wow, look at all this gray". 

True, it had been six weeks since I had colored my hair.  I had an appointment the very next day to get it colored.  I wasn't scheduled to be back in his school until the end of the week, so I decided to be a little playful...

"You know what?  I'm going to see a magician tomorrow.  She's going to wave her magic wand at me and make my hair turn brown again." 

"Hmmm... "  he replied.  "I don't know if any magician will be able to do anything about that!"


When I showed back up at the school on Friday, he stopped me dead in my tracks as I was walking down the hall with my class.  He pulled my arm down, and started looking in my hair, picking it up randomly and scrutinizing the hair underneath.  My class watched in silence, stupefied at what they were seeing.

"Whoa... That was one powerful magician you saw!!!  There isn't any gray left in there at all!!"

I love my powerful magician!  She has the power to make a graying head brown again, and give me a haircut that makes me feel good about how I look for six weeks. 

Blue Hair

 This post originally appeared in my now defunct "Mom's View" blog.  I moved it to this blog at the request of my kids, who wanted to have all of the various posts that accompanied their high school years in one place.  I've matched the publication dates here to their original post date.  If you're reading these posts, I sincerely thank you for taking the time to go back through them all!

My 16 year old daughter dyes her hair.  I'm not thrilled with it, but if this is her form of rebellion, I can live with it.  Dyeing her hair is so much better than many other ways she could choose to rebel.  (Drinking, drugs, sex, etc.)

Usually, she dyes that beautiful head of brown hair red.

I came home to a different experience Thursday night.

Her hair was blue.

She had bought a bottle of blue hair dye at the store, and attempted to dye the red/brown mass blue.

Do you remember the story in Anne of Green Gables, where Anne attempted to dye the mass of red hair black, and it turned green?  This story reminds me of Anne's attempt to dye her hair.

Not only is her hair this hideous color of blue-green, so is her scalp.  And her hands.  Her neck.  Her ears.  Her nose.  Her forehead.  Her fingers are really blue, and her cuticles are just freaky.

Of course, she chose to do this on a Thursday night.  Do you see the problem yet?  She still had to go to school yesterday.  The good news is that hand sanitizer does remove some of the dye.  The bad news is, she's still a ghastly shade of blue.

Fortunately, she has a good sense of humor.  She went to school with a scarf around her neck to hide the dye on her neck.  She left her hair down so it would cover her ears.  Her face and hands are still a ghastly shade of blue, though.

When questioned about the blue, (as any normal person would), she told people one of three things:

1) I've been feeling a little blue lately.

2) I'm releasing my inner smurf.

3) I decided to go Avatar.  Didn't  you get the memo?

I honestly can't imagine what her day was like.  I offered the option of staying home, but she decided to go to school.

I'm proud of her.  It's not everyone who can pull off the blue look and hold their head up in school for the entire day!