The other day as I was getting my jacket on and getting ready to leave, my daughter came around the corner and asked me where I was going.

“I’m leaving to get my hair done,” I answered as I bent over to slip on my shoes.

“Oh no!” She moaned.

“What do you mean, oh no?” I asked. I mean, there was no question about it; I was starting to resemble Medusa so I figured a haircut was a good thing.

“Frac! Mom’s getting her hair done!” she called to her brother. Then Frac came racing into the room and skidded to a stop on his dirty socks.

“You’re not going to do anything funny with it, are you?” he asked suspiciously.

I looked at my ego bruising spawn and then looked in the mirror by the door. I didn’t look like a freak. Why were they suddenly acting like I just morphed into one? “Um, no. I was thinking of just getting a trim. But now that you think of it, maybe I’ll shave it off.”

“As if,” Fric said as she rolled her eyes at me. (Sometimes I just want to take those pretty blue eyes and staple them into one place so she can’t do the whole eye rolling snotty preteen routine with me.)

Instead I just asked her to define a funny hair cut.

Before I barely finished my sentence, Frac chimed in with “Any of the weird hairdo’s you used to have before you decided to start growing out your hair. You’re so pretty now.” Clever boy, trying to sway me with compliments.

I patted my little minions on the head and hopped in the car to leave them wondering if I was going to pull a Dennis Rodman and come home with multicolour hair and MOM shaved into the side of my skull.

As I drove into the city I started thinking about my hairstyles of the past. Surely they weren’t all bad, I thought to myself. When I got to the salon, my stylist, the incredible, amazing and most beautiful Carolyn asked if we were going to try something different.

“I think you’d look really great with that new bob Posh Spice is sporting,” she said as she played with my hair.

I was tempted to try it, but my children’s faces and their looks of horror flashed before my eyes. “No, let’s just stick with a trim,” I sighed. So boring.

When I came home my children peeked behind their hands that were plastered over their eyes and sighed audibly with relief when they saw I didn’t do anything drastically different to my hair. “Nice ‘do,” they called as they resumed whatever game my entrance had interupted.

Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about my hair choices in the past. I decided to crack open the photo albums and walk through time. Nothing like a little photographic evidence to prove my children wrong. That I am indeed, a high fashion guru, whose style choices are always bang on.

Snicker.

It started well enough. I was a cute kid, if I say so myself.

Of course, my mom was in charge of my hair style back then. 

Then I moved onto grade school pictures and remembered the time in grade five when my best friend Jen, cut off all her beautiful hair. I had to have the same cut. My mom pleaded with me to change my mind but I was adamant. I wanted a boy’s cut.

My tenth birthday. I look like my son. 

So I may have made one bad choice. Big deal. I was ten. In the eyes of the law, I can’t be held accountable for my actions.

Fast forward several years (it took that long to grow out) and I was 16, almost 17. It was a lovely day out on the Pacific ocean, just off Vancouver Island. Not bad. Not great, but not bad.

I pined for Boo the entire trip, only to break up with him a week after I got home. I blame my hair for my idiocy. 

Then I found this. Ouch. I was twenty. And decided I no longer liked being blonde. So I switched to strawberry blonde.

Reason #564 why my brother-in-law is not allowed to have a camera near me.

Which led me to this photo. It was Fric’s first Christmas. Try and ignore my lovely ‘do, and focus on the cute bald baby.

To think I conceived Frac with hair like that. My husband must have been blind.

Shortly after Frac was born, I decided hair maintenance was too much work with a thirteen month old and a newborn. So I made the decision to hack it all off, just days after giving birth.

>This is why you never hack off your hair when your hormones are in flux. You could look like me. 

I actually didn’t mind the short hair, but my husband hated crawling into bed with a carrot-topped boy who sprayed milk from her boobs. He found it disconcerting. So I promised to try and grow it out.

That’s when I discovered wings really can’t help you fly. 

Turns out the length wasn’t really the problem, but the colour. Boo wanted my blonde back. So I hacked it all off to try and get the orange out and start growing it from scratch.

I’ll do anything to please my man. Heh heh.

I was going for a sexy brillo pad look. 

But I was easily bored and schizophrenic. When it finally got long, I quickly tired of the bland blonde and decided to switch things up by going dark.

Bug wouldn’t come near me for weeks. Either would Boo. 

The brown wasn’t rocking me. Turns out this gal has more fun blonde than brunette. But I was feeling bogged down by motherhood and heck, I was still young. I decided to try something more spastic trendy.

This is what my best friend calls my Oreo Cookie days. She’s supportive like that. She had to hug me to keep from crying. 

Alright. That was definitely a bad choice. Compounded a few weeks later when my mother went out and got the exact same cut and colour. We were two Oreo’s from the same package.

My husband threatened divorce if I didn’t fix my hair so I hacked it all off and went back to blonde.

He was much happier with me. 

My hair was threatening to mutiny so I decided to let it be for a bit.

But then I got restless. Nothing like changing your hair to make you feel like a new woman.

I can’t decide what’s worse, the hair, the colour or my double chin. 

It was shortly after this photo was taken that my son died. I remember coming home from his funeral and looking into the mirror and not recognizing myself. I looked so empty. So sad.

I decided right then that I would never dye my hair another hideous colour again. I know it’s ridiculous to correlate hair colour with death, but I’ll never be able to be dark haired again with out being reminded of the worst time of my life.

So I stripped it and went back to my normal colour.

Much better. Even if I’m not sitting up straight and every guy in the room can see down my shirt. Heh. 

As I gathered up all the photo albums and put them back on the shelf, I realized my kids were right. I have made some facked up funny hair choices.

(Literally. The kids won’t stop laughing as they look at these pictures. Ingrates.)

No wonder my husband lives in fear every time I tell him I am going to get my hair done.

Heh. That’s half the fun of being a girl.

It’s my hair and I’ll do what I want to. And right now, I want to look, er, normal.