Maria Martin

The end of spring is approaching, and my elementary school has an after-school fair. There are inflatable obstacle courses and fair games, but one stand, in particular, has everyone’s attention. At first glance, one may wonder why water and some chalk would attract such a large crowd; after all, It was just a blonde woman temporarily coloring some hair. Despite its childish appeal and simplicity, this woman’s magic with a spray bottle and chalk changed how I viewed my hair for the rest of my life. Even then, it felt exhilarating. At ten years old, I walked away from the fair smiling as a bright red highlight gleamed, bouncing in front of my eyes.

That day was the beginning of my hair journey. After exasperating my poor mother, we drove to Michaels to buy pastels of all the different colors. I would spend the weekends dampening my hair and gliding the red and purple pastels against it. Looking back, it looked horrible, but I loved it. The more times I applied the pastels, the longer I wanted the color to last. Naturally, the next best step was Kool-aid hair. After watching endless videos on Youtube, an attempt was made by steeping my hair in piping hot cherry Kool-aid. There is particular emphasis on “attempt” since nothing appeared on my dark brown hair. Despite this mishap, I was not deterred. By the end of 6th grade, I managed to get permission to bleach and dye the ends of my hair. My at-home bleach job with the Splat dye kit was mediocre at best, but it gave me bright red “dip-dye” ends. At school, I would rave about the various colors I wanted next, so much so that my best friend claimed that she would dye her hair the next time I did. Soon after, I began sporting purple ends while my friend dyed hers blue. Weeks passed, and the color faded from our hair, leaving us with unfortunate orange-bleached ends. I decided to cut it off and leave my hair alone.

Well…up until the day we were flying to see family in France. Hours before leaving for the airport, I lathered the bottom half of my hair with blue dye. My next hair project happened in my first year of high school. I enlisted the help of a salon because the goal was to achieve a light gray on the underlayer of my hair. I spent the next three years growing out ten inches worth of bleach. Now in college, I have dyed my brown hair to a reddish tint. Some may say that it is for the Georgia Bulldogs (that is some crazy school spirit), but it might be my ten-year-old self happy to have red in my hair again.