Dayna and her best friend, Maddi, narrowed their picks to three shades and Dayna came to me to help her choose the winner. She had medium ash blonde, medium golden blonde, and dark natural blonde. I talked her into the darker shade because I have seen and heard the horror stories of trying to go too light on the first shot...carrot tops! The LAST thing I needed was a 14 year old who already has self-confidence issues at times refusing to leave the house because she's got orange hair. I figured dark blonde was safer. (In the end it was, but there were bumps along the road getting there.)
If you've ever read a box of hair dye, you've seen the awful warnings they put on those boxes. You'd wonder why on Earth they let this stuff be sold over the counter. "May cause serious allergic reaction that may be fatal." "If product contacts eyes, may cause blindness." Huh?!?!?!? Now I'm glad I don't dye my hair...what did I get myself into telling her this is okay? Well, millions of people do it, so here we go! Directions read, allergy test explained, temper tantrum ensued! The following day and a half all I heard was, "Can me and Maddi dye my hair now? Why not? Maddi's never had a reaction! Why do I have to do that? Can I just do it for an hour? Okay, overnight but I want to dye it tomorrow!"
Allergy skin test complete, no reactions, a whole lot of, "I told you I'd be fine"'s and an ecstatic teenager later we sat at the kitchen table to commence Operation Dye Dayna's Hair. About a quarter of the way into it, I realize, her hair comes to her butt...I should have bought two boxes. Live and Learn. I actually had enough in the one bottle, but next time we're definitely buying two so we can saturate it better. Once the stuff is in her hair, I realize I need to figure out how to rinse this kid's head. I threw some towels in the bathroom and figured I'll stand in the tub while she leans over the side, and I'll hose her down with the shower head.
While rinsing her head, I realized I was having a bit of trouble bending over her. The shower head wasn't overly cooperative, the hose was shorter than I'd have liked. About halfway through, I sprayed myself in the face. All I could think was, "Oh no! Did that spray me directly from the shower head or was that a ricochet off her head with dye in it?" I finished rinsing her head praying it was not hair dye in my eye - especially after reading the side of the box. Ugh! I wrapped Dayna's head in a towel, jumped out of the shower (at this point, soaked from the knee down) and rinsed my eyes out. Then I got her head back in the shower for the conditioner.
By this time, it's 11:30pm. Her head is done, wrapped in a towel, she's got that from here. I'm left cleaning up, and over-reacting to my eye incident. Who do you call at 11:30 at night for a hair dye question? Kathy dyes her hair...she works nights...her husband Chris is usually up...text message off! Kathy's working. Chris assures me I'll be fine and won't go blind, but knows I'm overanalyzing so calls around to find someone who dyes their hair regularly to get me some advice. Word comes back that it would have hurt worse, and I'll be fine. I state, "But it's still bugging me!" Chris insists it's because I "blasted my eye with a bottle of saline." I deny it, I didn't "blast" my eye, I "flushed it." To this he responds, "I know you, and my mother was a nurse, face it. You blasted your eye."
By 2am I'm still bugged by this. I'm checking the websites of the local hospitals to see if one of them happens to have telephone triage so I can call and just have a medical professional tell me I'm fine. I don't want to go to the ER for something stupid, but I don't want to be blind tomorrow morning either. No luck finding a number...don't these places do this stuff? They should! Ah! Poison Control is 24 hours! I grabbed the phone. According to the "Poison Specialist" (what does one have to do to become a "poison specialist"? Is that a specific course you can take in school? What are the prerequisites? Who else thinks of this stuff?) it would have hurt a lot worse than I described had I actually gotten the dye in my eye, and since it was just a box of regular over the counter hair dye and not a chemical relaxer, I didn't have much to worry about, but if I still couldn't sleep, they would be there all night and I was free to call back for reassurance if I needed to. Now I could go to sleep.
The following morning, Dayna informed me that she felt like her head had been attacked by a raspberry. She was not the dark natural blonde the box professed she'd be, but a slightly lighter brown with all of her natural red highlights brought to the surface! I thought it looked nice. I know it was not the color she was aiming for. And so I called mom and asked her to set up a hair appointment for us so the beautician could see how her hair turned out and let us know the best course to take to get it near the color Dayna wanted...but that story's for another blog :-)
And now you can all laugh at me as much as everyone else who knows about this for needing to call Poison Control over something "stupid," but I got to sleep after that phone call, so it was worth it! I'm glad they're there!
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