Let's face it: we all age; we all turn gray. The vanity in us tries to fight the inevitable, and in an effort to stay young we turn to our good friend, "hair dye." When I have a special event coming up I'll fork over the cash for a professional job but in the meantime, for touch ups, I go with good old Lady Clairol. Most of the time the majority of us that try the home bottle job get it right but on occasion one tends to mess up a bit and it takes 2-3 times to get it right.

My grandmother has had her share of mishaps. One time my brother brought his girlfriend home to meet the family on a Friday night for dinner. Grandma had just finished dying her hair but it must have gone bad because it came out green. The girl was a little wide-eyed but was polite. The next day we went to a big family picnic and the girlfriend saw Grandma was now a brunette. You'd think this was the end of it but apparently Grandma was still not satisfied with being a brunette either. She goes for round three and dyes it yet again to a light blonde. So you can imagine the look on the girlfriend's face by church on Sunday as yet a third look is revealed by Grandma. I'm equally surprised she wasn't bald by Sunday after 3 dye jobs in 3 days. The hair was still there but unfortunately spiked straight up to the moon resembling boxing promoter, Don King.

I have to say that Lady Clairol saved my butt when I was out in L.A. My sister took me to this famous hair dresser, "Pierre", that does the likes of Heather Locklear and Lindsay Lohan (I guess Pierre won't be doing her tresses anytime soon in jail however). I explained to the guy that I wanted blonde highlights but with one thin streak of red in the front. My sister went next door for a croissant and coffee and by the time she came back the job was just about done. I stared at the train wreck in the mirror with the whole front of my head dyed to a bright fushia. I looked like a troll doll!! My sister spit out her croissant in little chunks all over this hot pink horror show. "I can't let you leave looking like that," she hysterically laughed. She tells Pierre it looks horrible which offends him and he wasn't so gentle during the second dying. The end result was a disaster to say the least with me and my sister in tears. On the way home we stopped at Rite-Aid and got a box of Lady Clairol doing it a third time that night. It came out exactly how I tried to explain it to Pierre and it only cost $6 bucks! That and the $200 I blew at Pierre's' made it a total of $206 bucks. Oy!

Now taking care of one's hair after all this dying is a whole other kick in the can. I have found that the majority of shampoo and conditioner products are liars. Vidal Sassoon? With my curly hair, using his stuff I look like I've been through a tornado. I look more like Vidal "Monsoon" did my hair. I recently got taken in by the Garnier commercials with Sarah Jessica Parker promising me luxurious locks. She swore on national television that this product would cure my "fly away frizz." Well it did it so well I couldn't get a comb through it. I broke the handle right off the brush fighting to get it through what had turned into a brillo pad on my head. So now I'm stuck with a whole bottle of both shampoo and conditioner of a product that is making me look like Little Richard. The dog didn't even like it when I tried the stuff on him. He went from looking like a collie to a poodle. Another lesson I've learned is no matter how enticing it looks don't ever buy shampoo and conditioner from the dollar store. There is a list of reasons why it's in the dollar store. You'll be riding the S.S. Baldy cruise on a journey to "all-your-hair-falling-out-in-clumps" land. It's not a happy place.

I honestly don't think there's a product alive that could tame my mane. A little girl told me last Halloween that I should go as a witch since I already have the hair for it. No matter what I do, I always look like I just crawled out of a ditch after a night in the county lock-up. Too bad "electrocution" wasn't a popular look these days — I'd be a trendsetter. At least in the 80's I fit in with that "big hair" trend. I can't imagine why God thought this was a good look for me. Clearly we can rule God out as being skilled in the beautician career category. That could be a slogan for the hair styling industry: "God is not a beautician that's why he made hair stylists."

So I'm just going to accept that I'm going through life looking like witchy-poo. I told my friend Karla, that I was finally just gonna go natural and say to hell with it and turn gray already. She laughed and smirked, turning her eyes "South of the Border" while pointing, "Wait till it ALL goes gray." An atomic mushroom cloud went off in my head at the unthinkable and I just about got a ticket screetching to a halt at Rite-Aid in search of my best friend, Miss Clairol.