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“I need to get my purple hair shampoo,” Alice announces to
all of the women in the shower. In the Kennedy High pool locker room, after a
surprisingly calm swim for a Sunday, I am trying to get warm, letting the hot
stream of water cascade over my back.
“Does it
really turn your hair purple?” I holler after Alice as she shuffles back with
the large plastic bottle, which is indeed, purple.
“It’s not
really purple,” she chuckles. “Well, you know…like it’s blue, you know what I
mean?”
I think of
old ladies, their grey hair tinted blue. Have I seen this? Or is it just from
the movies?
“My hair
used to turn green,” I comment to L, another swimmer to the left of me in the
shower.
“Oh, I
loved it when the boys had green hair!” she exclaims. “It was all sexy and
spiky.”
I nod, laughing, thinking how my own green hair was just slimy and shiny. Sexy? I doubt it, but who thinks they’re sexy at 14? How can I even remember being 14? But I do remember the green hair. How in order to get it out, we’d have to douse our heads with tomato juice. Pouring thick red goo on to our heads. Me and my sisters giggling and laughing. “EWWWWW! It smells so bad!” “Nah!” my sister, P, would refute. “It’s like our heads are pizzas!” “Gross!” our little sister, L, would wrinkle her nose. Not having blonde hair, she didn’t have to undergo the tomato sauce regime to remove the chlorine sheen.
Tomato
juice was used for other untoward situations. I remember one of our dogs
getting sprayed by a skunk. The stench was hideous. Potent and nauseating. The
dog, of course, had just been chasing the skunk, but the skunk as skunks will
do, hadn’t cottoned to this. Hence the spray. We’d take the dog into the
shower, my mom drenching it with tomato juice, emptying cans and dumping them
on the dog. Rubbing it in. Then rinsing. Repeating this several times. Then,
after all the stench was removed (as best it could be), it was time for the
Suave Green Apple shampoo. The dogs loved the results afterward. Prancing
around the house, the odor of green apples wafting throughout the house.
“Do you
want to try some?” Alice asked another grey-haired woman in the shower.
“Sure,” she
said.
“Aren’t you
afraid of having purple hair?” I asked.
She shook
her head, “That’s okay.”
My shower
mate grinned, “I once tried to dye my hair, but it was too dark. We bleached it
first, but still it wouldn’t take. I always wanted blue hair.”
“Blue is my favorite color!” I
exclaimed.
“Exactly!”
she said, turning off the shower, wringing her suit, gathering up her various
hair product bottles, long toothed comb, and razor.
Rinsing out
the shampoo, I thought about the green hair of my youth. Swimming was an
everyday activity. Green hair just went with the territory.
Now?
I wring out
my hair, feeling the slimy wetness of it, glancing down at the ends.
No green
anymore. But maybe some blue? Or purple?
“Hey,
Alice,” I say, before leaving the shower area. “Do you bring your purple
shampoo everyday? Maybe I could try some next time.”
She laughs.
Hearty and amused. “Of course! You’d look so cute with purple hair!”
Nodding, I think, she’s right. I would look cute with purple hair. I stand in the middle of the locker room, toweling off, listening to the chatter of the women.
"Are you going to the march on Saturday?"
"I'm thinking about it, are you?"
"Swimming makes me so hungry. I'm ready to have me some Chinese!"
"Mmmm....you said it girl, let's ...."
Grinning, I open my locker, pull out my clothes, and start to get dressed.
