Not 30 Yet

Today is Nathan's 29th birthday, and I've already heard him say to someone on the phone, "I feel old." I'm just a few months younger than Nathan, and the one thing that always makes me feel old is my hair. So in order to make Nathan feel a little younger, I've decided to write a post about my gray. This is perfect because I'm getting it colored this week so right now it's at its worst.

Nathan is just now getting his first gray hairs which he blames on stress. I think I found my first gray in early high school. I ignored them at first, but soon I had to start covering them because of the extreme contrast between the white and my natural dark hair. They also have a wiry texture and stick up all over my head. It began with carefully placed highlights in college. The grays just blended with the caramel colored streaks. In Auburn, I had to get serious. Since we watched our money carefully, I colored my hair myself.

I'm proud to say that I had only one coloring disaster. I went too dark once with a box of color that was on sale (hint - hair color goes on sale for a reason) and the resulting color was a jet black/blue. Yikes. Re-colored it the same night, and it was okay. Still noticeable the next day at school but okay. I remember students staring. I also remember Tiffany not speaking a word about it until lunch and here's what I remember her saying. "I've been thinking about your hair all morning, and I've come to a decision. It suits you." I'm still not sure if that was the truth, but I've never been one to stress about my hair.

Another memory about my hair involved Nathan's Grandmother Lucy who has the prettiest white hair ever. I'm pretty sure this incident started the highlighting/coloring. Nathan and I were in college, and his family was in town. We all went to Joseph Beth, my favorite book store, to browse and maybe to eat at the seafood restaurant downstairs. I grabbed a book from the New Release shelf and found a bench. Nathan's grandmother came up behind me and said in a very sad way, "Oh, Lyndsey." I turned around and looked at her, and she said (again, very sadly), "You've got gray hair." Yes. Yes I do. She had never seen my hair from that angle before. Must have been pretty bad.

My mom would call my two years as a red-head a "coloring disaster," but I liked it. Now I'm back to dark brown. When Nathan graduated from vet school, I said I wanted two things. 1) I never wanted to live in a trailer again. 2) I wanted to pay someone to color my hair. Check and check. I love the girl that does my hair...we went to high school together. I go every four to five weeks to cover the mess I've documented below. People don't believe me when I say I'm gray. Seriously, my hair is gray. I told my mom that I was going to strip the color from it, chop it off, and go salt and pepper. She just said, "Lyndsey. You can't do that. You're not even thirty."

My siblings all have dark brown hair. Not. One. Gray. WTF? I shouldn't complain about Thad because he shaves his head clean. Scott (my brother who is fourteen years older than me) once made the mistake of complaining about a gray hair to me. Really? I like to think I have one gray hair for every time someone said to me - You must be Scott/Erica/Thad's sister.

So, to my husband and all my buddies who feel old (even though we are not) - here's a nice picture to cheer you up.