Now listen hair.

I will so get up in your grill if you give bad service at the Home Depot or the Safeway. I have walked back up to the drive thru window at Wendy’s when mayo has been put on my burger. I have told people off at the Social Security Office and once launched a one-woman campaign against the idiocy of my long-distance phone company. But consistently I have a fear of salon stylists.

I know rationally they can’t be more fragile than others in general, but I won’t give them negative feedback, and my timidity around salon folk has caused me many a bad hair year. A stylist at the Hair Core on Route 10 once convinced me that if she covered my hair in 1.5 inch layers, the whole head would be full of beautiful curls. I agreed, wanting at the time to resemble the sister on Alf. Forty-five minutes later, I looked more like the main character.

I have let them put three unwanted colors of high and lowlights onto my head. I have run up exorbitant bills that forced me to dip into my college funds. Once in my adult life a salon girl gave me a makeup lesson. She started going places I didn’t necessarily want her to – smoky eyes (remember that popular heroin look?), red lips (think Jessica Rabbit) and cartoon brows (again, Alf). But did I say anything? I just let her have her way with my face. I looked so much like a hooker that I had to cancel my lunch date with my father for fear that his fellow committee members might think him running around on my mother.

A few months ago, sick of the routine and the bills, I defiantly drove to CVS and picked out a nice shade of blond. This is gonna go down on my terms, I thought. Lesson number one: Brown hair turns orange when your dye costs six bucks (oh yes, once again, think Alf). Lesson number two: lesson number one will require you to dye your hair twice in one day, and it’s likely that the CVS workers will remember you even with that pink hoodie pulled up. Lesson number three: your beau and your colleagues will lie and tell you they really like that “Ashley Simpson black” color you resorted to. Thanks to all of you.

So I’m back to seeing professionals. But there hasn’t been a change. I sat under the hairdryer with a head full of foil this weekend until I was sure my scalp had burned off. And within minutes of leaving, my new blond, expensively-charred head and I told off the metal gas pump because unleaded had hit $3.00.