Memories of Cosmetology School

Back in the late 1970's I [Janice] decided I needed a skill to help supplement the family income and give me something to do while the young children were in school.  I didn't want to spend a lot of time going to college and wanted to pick up on something quickly to bring additional money into the home.  Since I was a young girl, I started playing around with my own hair, and I'd fix neighbors hair. I'm not sure now what it looked like, but I liked it.  I can remember the first time I colored my hair, yes in 6th grade. My parents were off on a full day trip and I decided to use my mother's hair color and color my own hair. Mind you I was a blonde and mom was a brunette. My sister-in-law 'to be' at that time immediately called her girlfriend when she saw me and they tried to "fixed" my hair. I'm sure it looked terrible after I colored it, and then they tried to color correct it. Well you can imagine the surprise when my parents came home and saw my hair.
That wasn't the last time by any stretch of imagination. Why wasn't I satisfied with blonde hair? There are women that spend thousands of dollars every year to have their hair colored the way mine was. But by the time I graduated high school I was back to being a blonde. After I got married and had a couple daughters and one son, I played beauty shop with them also, so it wasn't any surprise when I thought what I wanted to do when I 'grew up' that I'd go to cosmetology school. I won't boar you with all that I learned in school and cut right to the chase about what prompted this particular blog.
Tonight I am going to our local Mardi Gras dinner/dance/jazz and this morning I colored my hair a beautiful shade of red. Earlier in the week I also cut my hair, however I've had the flu this week and did not feel like styling it so I called for an appointment and had my hair washed and style by this lovely young Mexican gal who speaks no English and I speak very little Spanish. At least not enough to tell her what I want and don't want. She proceeds to wash, towel dry, mouse it up, blow it dry and then use a curling iron on my hair. Once she is finished with that, she takes a teasing comb and teases my short, fine, thin hair where all you see are little strands of red hair sticking straight up. If that isn't enough, she sprays it with hair spray and begins to 'pick out' my hair into a style. My head is bobbing from side to side with every pick of the comb since there is so much spray in it and this hair that is teased down starts coming out. I think I must have lost 100 more strands of my already thin hair. All the while smiling [I'm sure she is thinking I like what she is doing] as I'm recalling learning the exact same thing in cosmetology school when I was in my 20's on old ladies that had blue hair. Tease the heck out of it, because we new it would be like that until the next week when they came in again. I saw myself as one of those old ladies, only with red hair, and guessed she must have recently gotten out of school for the same thing. I get one more thorough shot of hair spray and I'm on my way. 

 

Follow up to the story.  Mardi Gras was a blast.  Joel is down visiting his cousin in the Yucatan Pennisula and so I went with very good friends and danced the night away.  There were so many of us ladies on the dance floor having such a great time. 

Wonderful women friends! Thanks all for a great night for this

Red Head gone wild.