Lenawee Smiles: Hair today, gone with the wind tomorrow

It strikes me as a fine plan as I visit my favorite salonista. She is magic on her feet with flashing scissors, razors and a dryer in use all at one time. I can barely shampoo my hair in an hour and a half on a good day without calling out the National Guard.

Recently, as I settled into her too-comfy chair, I said, “I think I want to let it grow out.”

I am pretty sure her dash to the hallway meant she was hyper-ventilating, her eyes crossing, and taking a quick sip from a small bottle tucked away behind the towels.

“I see. Well, yessss, we could try that.” Perhaps she was thinking back to the previous three times I had made this pronouncement.

I really don’t have curly hair. I have 53 cowlicks that twirl in opposite directions on three-fourths of my head. The remaining fourth of my hair is poker-straight.

Chloe has her work cut out for her every single time I appear before her in my bedraggled state.

I followed up this “Let’s grow ’er out” tune with, “Could you do it into a curly style this time?”

I watched her carefully work some “product” into my hair. “Product” is the umbrella word in the hair industry that covers everything that covers your hair once you leave the shampoo station. At least I think I have that straight.

She produced a gorgeous batch of hair on my head in record time using a “diffuser.”

I’ve seen these sorts of things before. They look like 5-inch shower heads but spew forth air instead of water. I guess this is so that the air doesn’t blast everything to kingdom come but gently dries it, in my case, into curls.

She finished, showed me the back of my head. I was the only one in there so I knew it was my head, nor was it some picture pasted on the mirror. I paid her, grabbed some coffee and headed out the door.

Women everywhere will know what happened next. A typhoon appeared from Indonesia as I stepped out to go to my car. By the time I was in the driver’s seat, the top of my head looked like the Nazca Lines Landing Strips in the Andes that all the alien theorists get sweaty about.

I had to take this head and its Medusa locks and go to an appointment.

When I got home, I thought to myself that I should surely be able to take care of my own hair. I decided to shop for a diffuser hair dryer online. The question was this: what color? Neon Orange or Sparkly Raspberry dryers were $24.95 plus tax and shipping. I wanted Snowy Aqua. What? Snowy Aqua was $39.95 plus tax and shipping.

What foul scheme was this?

The Sparkly Raspberry dryer arrived the next day — all 2 pounds of it.

The diffuser directions indicated all I had to do was slap some slimy goo on my hair, push it around then hold the dryer close to my head. This would produce a glorious new hair style to astonish my friends and make my enemies gnash their teeth and probably slap knees in hysteria.

I ran to the kitchen for a Diet Coke, made my bed and worked a Wordle puzzle.

“Stop it, right now,” I said to myself, “shampoo that mess and get on with it.”

I did, then worked the stuff into my hair, attached the diffuser to the hair dryer, set the heat button, found the on/off switch, took a deep breath and began the journey of no return … or beginning.

When I came too close to my head, I kept hitting it with the prongs of the diffuser. They do not look sharp but are not flexible like Vienna sausages. If they get within a half-inch of your head, they do damage.

So I used both hands to try to control this wind machine that was supposed to make me look decent enough to be out in public.

Polite friends talked around their hands and said, “Looksfinewhatareyoufussingabout?”

I knew better.

Second attempt: more slimy stuff, most of which landed on my shirt, with minimally better results. I let it dry a bit before making sure I wouldn’t blow the window out of my bathroom.

I had introduced a monster into the house. Not one that would fight with the cats or eat all the frozen yogurt.

This one at best would make me look like an ancient Shirley Temple whose tap shoes were cracked and whose curls were sagging.

Nuts.

Susan Keezer lives in Adrian. Send your good news to her at lenaweesmiles@gmail.com. 

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Susan Keezer: Hair today, gone with the wind tomorrow