I started out bald. I looked pretty much like a billiard ball until the age of one. It was then that hair actually appeared on my little noggin. Eventually it grew long enough for mom to curl it into rags and make beautiful, golden locks from it. Shirley Temple was all the rage when I was a little girl, so I fit the mold perfectly. As time went by, my hair turned a little darker until finally when I entered high school it was referred to as dishwater blond. Who wants to be stuck with a color like that? So, I found a bottle of hydrogen peroxide in the medicine cabinet and thought I’d give it a try. The change was gradual, which is precisely what I wanted. My mom never understood why she had to keep replacing the peroxide. Maybe she thought I was using it on my teeth.

Those high school years led to various rinses that would enhance the color of my hair. Nothing too damaging and certainly not as bad as pouring peroxide on my head every day. By the time I graduated, I had platinum blond hair. Years passed. I got tired of the Marilyn Monroe look and opted for a different color. By then I was married, and my husband had married a blond. I proceeded to experiment with different shades of blond. I even tried darker colors – dirty blond, ash blond, strawberry blond, honey blond. Who knew there were so many shades of one color?

After the birth of three children, I started to branch out even further. One week, in fact, I turned from blond to redhead to brunette and finally green hair. My husband told his friends he had gone to bed with a blond, redhead and brunette all in one week. When it turned green, he said nothing.

When my youngest daughter went to cosmetology school, I was lured into trying a plethora of new hair colors. I finally decided on the highlighted look and stuck with it for many years. It was a good choice. The colors blended well with the new natural gray tones beginning to appear.

Then I retired at age 75 I decided it was time to let nature take its course. It was getting expensive. It was one way to cut down on unnecessary costs. Within months, I still had highlights running through my crown of glory. Here I am, eight years later and I still have highlights. Maybe I should’ve saved myself a lot of money and lived with what I had. Maybe I should’ve done that with all the mistakes I made along the way.