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I dried it with a high powered dryer so I could see the results quickly. Omygosh! It wasn't curled! It wasn't curly! It was frizzy! I had a gigantic head of frizz that stuck out all over! I was horrified. The next day I was to attend an awards ceremony where I was to receive several scholastic achievement awards and a scholarship for the following year. And, to make matters worse, I was to meet the parents of the young man I was dating seriously.

My roommate calmed me down, telling me that perhaps the curl was frizzy because we had used such a hot blow dryer on it, and we hadn't used any hair conditioner, and she was sure that once we trimmed the ends a little, the frizz would be gone. Then we debated whether I wanted to continue with the hair color, or wait to see what we could do about the frizz. Since the initial reason for this beauty session had been to color my hair, I decided that I'd go ahead with the dye. Donning the cheap plastic gloves that came in the kit, she applied the dye and then covered my hair with a shower cap as instructed. We waited. Dye trickled down my face in several spots, and unless we wiped it up right away, it left ugly stains on my skin. She wiped the streaks off my neck with petroleum jelly and alcohol, telling me the whole time that she was sure the skin irritation would be gone by morning. My scalp burned and itched until it was finally time to rinse out the dye. I could prolong this story by including my exclamations and expletives, but suffice it to say that my hair was orange. Yes, orange. Like Halloween orange. I ran my fingers through it, and big chunks of it came off in my hands. My hair was breaking off-close to my scalp! I was in danger of being bald by morning. At that point I completely lost it and begin sobbing. Our other roommates, back from their Friday night dates, came in to survey the fiasco. One of them volunteered to cut my hair short, so that the weight of it would not pull at the brittle roots. I agreed, and soon I had a hair cut that in later years my mother would call a "nursing home hair cut"-short, easy to wash and maintain, and bereft of all style.

I still faced the quandary of the awards ceremony and my roommate offered to lend me a then-fashionable newsboy hat popular with a British fashion model known as Twiggy. Ideas for coloring the orange hair a more natural shade bounced around, but the consensus was that we'd put enough chemicals in my hair for one day. My roommates recommended that before going to bed I should saturate my hair with mayonnaise, which everyone agreed was the best hair moisturizer you could buy. I wrapped an old rag around my head, then covered the whole mess with a dry cleaner's plastic bag so that I wouldn't get mayonnaise on my pillow. I couldn't sleep, of course, and I got up early to shower, wash off the mayonnaise, and survey the damage in the light of day. It was every bit as bad as I had thought, and now not only was my hair a disaster, but my eyes were puffy from crying and my face was streaked with hair dye stains.

I don't know how I had the courage to attend the ceremony, but I did, keeping the newsboy hat on through the whole thing, even the lunch with my boyfriend's parents. That was the last time I had a home perm, but not the last time I dyed my hair. Now of course, I have it done professionally, but never in shades of red!

Learn more about this author, Estela Dela Fuente.
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