Nice Girl Hair

The floodgates of old age are opening, and I’m floating down stream in a rapid current.

What does that mean, you ask?

Well, let me explain, since you asked.

I marched into my beauty salon last week, and announced I wanted a swatch of my hair tinted/dyed pink! We aren’t talking pastel pink. We are talking Vivid/Wild/Statement Making pink hair. And it is so cool.

Mixed statements are swirling around me when folks take a second look and see this thatch of pink sprouting from my short locks.

But, I love it.

A mere 6 months, maybe even 6 weeks, ago I wouldn’t have thought about adding pink to my grey hair. Nice girls don’t do that! Just like nice girls don’t smoke while walking, or chew gum in public, or put a toothpick in one’s mouth no matter how much spinach you have between your front teeth. Nice girls don’t wear red shoes; nice girls don’t dance, and nice girls certainly don’t take liberties with their hair.

I have been ruled by ‘nice girl’ dictates all my life; dictates that I never pledged to follow. But follow I did. I remember someone once told me nice girls didn’t sit on the side of a desk and certainly not while wearing a red dress. That may have been the first time I was consciously aware that I disobeyed a nice girl rule. I like red dresses, red shoes, sitting on a desk, picking my teeth, and dyeing my hair pink.

Such a sense of freedom to step away from the demands of being a nice/good girl and wander in the land of ‘bad girls’.  Who knew what fun I had been missing?

My feeling is if a haircut or shampoo will solve a problem, why do we get so worked up about it? I remember my mother saying, “it will grow out, eventually!”  That was right after she had left a Toni permanent on my head too long and a horse brush wouldn’t get through the tangles.

If you see me bouncing around town, just tell me you love pink hair…or blue hair or green hair, or purple hair, or rainbow hair. Who knows, you might decide to taste a bit of freedom too.