Haven't you learned?

I should know by now that if I don't run a brush through my hair and take my daughter to school looking like that hair is a rat motel, that will be the day Booie wants me to walk her all the way inside the building. I will run into every mom I've ever met. I will have to walk past my son's teacher twice. People will talk to me. I will regret deciding not to even put a hat on.

My hair is unbelievably bad right now. I need to dye my roots. I have about an inch of the incredibly ugly real hair color showing. I also need a hair cut. Split ends are slowly crawling up each hair shaft, making my already near-frizzy hair look even worse. And bangs? I don't even know what those are anymore.

Every few months I debate whether I should try the no-bangs look or not. I'm doing it again. Despite seeing how bad and old I look without bangs, I keep trying it. Just like going to the school with whopped hair, I haven't learned my lesson. I go through all the grief of growing out the bangs only to be reminded that I hate myself without them. It's not that I have a large forehead to hide or anything. It's just something to do with that squarish (or is that heart-shaped?) face that does not look good without bangs. And a lack of bangs also seems to bring out every little line that is slowly deepening in my skin, not to mention most of the lines reside on my forehead. This is the same debate I always have about cutting all my hair off. I grow it, then cut it, then grow it, then cut it. It's a never-ending cycle with the bangs and the short hair.

I'm in the long hair phase of the short/long cycle right now. It always seems like a good idea to do the long hair in the winter and the short hair in the summer. I really love short hair� on anyone but me. Every single time I get my hair cut short, I hate it almost to the point of tears. I have only cried after one hair cut, back when I was in high school. Now, I figure, it's only hair. Maybe I should excise that attitude, because it keeps making me cut my hair too short when I know I look hideous with short hair. I am so jealous of all those girls that can wear their hair short as can be. I always end up looking like someone plopped a wig on a pumpkin.

The only good thing about getting my hair cut short (besides it being much cooler) is that my hair grows pretty quickly. That doesn't do good things for my color though. As I've said before, my real hair color is ugly, not just any ugly, the color "ugly." I, and a few other unlucky people in the world, have rights to the color ugly. I don't know what God was thinking when he allowed that color into the palette of hair, but at least he gave us the means to cover it up. Maybe this color is just a lack of getting our real color before we were born.

I believe I'm a redhead. Except for my ability to tan, I have the complexion of a redhead, freckles and all. As long as I stay out of the sun and use sunscreen judiciously, I can maintain that redhead complexion. Hair stylists have even been fooled into believing I'm a natural redhead. I have to be as judicious in my root coverage as the skin protection though, or the ugly peeks through and gives me away.

I wanted red hair all my life. When I finally got up the courage to dye my hair, I immediately went for a reddish color, and I never looked back. Though I've just about covered the range of colors that come from a box, I always ended up going back to the reds. I got braver through the years until I was a full-on redhead, and I've been that way off and on for a while.