Ariel’s Bad Hair Day

My freshman year of college could very easily been known as “the year of the amateur hairdo”. 

My dorm room was the 18-year-old version of a perpetual beauty shop. 

We were forever cutting and coloring and crimping one another’s hair (If I ever had a male reader it’s safe to assume I just lost him with that sentence).  It was an interesting time, when our new found freedom combined with our frugal spending habits combined to make some of us a little shall-we-say ‘loose’ in our styling standards.  Some of us (read: ME) began to think a little too highly of our styling skills.  I may or may not have believed myself to be the Ken Paves of my dorm hallway.

It all began when my friend Jennifer ask me to cut her hair on a rainy Sunday afternoon.  Her previous cut had grown out and it was time for a change.  I first made her swear that she would not cut me out of her life if I failed and then proceeded to cut her hair.  It turned out I could cut in a semi-straight line and instantly became the Vidal Sassoon of room 315.

Unfortunately, as my client-base increased so did the need for me to have actual hair dressing skills.  Late one Monday night my friend Katy came home from Target with a beautiful box of auburn hair dye.  We all ‘oohed and aaahed’ over how beautiful she was sure to be once her hair was dyed and I began the process of coloring her hair.  We went through all the steps, waited the prescribed amount and then she went to wash it out.  I headed over to her room when I heard the hair-dryer blowing and nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.

Katy’s hair had turned Little Mermaid orange.

It was too late that night to run out and buy more hair dye so Katy was forced to live with it for a day.  Even though she was not to happy with me, she was still speaking to me.  I’ll never forget the hat she was forced to wear for the next day.  It was like a fisherman’s hat, with a brim, so she could show as little hair as possible, and she had two little braided pig tails peeking out from under it.  I’ll also never forget going to our college group later that night and our college minister took one look at Katy’s new magenta locks and said “Who did that to you?!?”.

After we told him that I (the John Frieda wanna-be) had performed the dye job, he asked Katy: “and you’re still speaking to her????”

We went straight to a Target and bought a new bottle of hair color.  Katy even trusted me enough to perform the new dye job (under the watchful eye of our friends).  Although I have rarely been as nervous as I was trying to fix her hair we did end up getting it back to a color found on planet earth, a very pretty brown color.

I am happy to report that Katy still speaks to me.  Even to this day.

Or, at least, she did before she read this friendly little reminder.