Hair Time

The teens were about being a brunette
I had my hair dark
And short
Because, you know
I believed that back then
Your hair had to mirror your soul
And my soul was black
Because I was living the tortured life
Of a Cranston firefighter's daughter

So the hair went black
My mother disowned me
And I dated a guy
Who worked downtown

To this day, I have no idea what he did
I just know he worked 'downtown'
And that was, I mean, that was 'downtown,' you know?

It's funny how big
The little world felt
Back then

When I got to college
I got the Cynthia Nixon cut
Red and short
Even shorter than the Goth girl high school cut
And regardless of how you think it looks on Cynthia Nixon
On me, it looked--

Well, it looked like I was competing
To be on the cover of Mad magazine

When I got out of college
I started working
Working--non-stop
And I decided
You know what?

I'm blonde
I might as well be blonde
Embrace blonde

And that's when I met my husband
And a few days after we met
I destroyed every pre-college photo I could find
But unfortunately, getting rid of a photo
Is like trying to hold a plastic ball underwater

They just keep popping back up

You know, I look at those photos and...

It's strange to have your hair
Be a marker for time

I look and I see this girl
Who was trying to race ahead to something
Trying to...

I spent most of my life trying to look older
And now that I'm older
All I want to do is look younger

Wouldn't you know
One is much easier than the other?

You can jump ahead in time if you want
Just close your eyes
Or cut your hair

But going back
Waiting for the hair to grow back
That's...

Well, that's a little bit
Trickier

But in the meantime
You have the pictures

You can look and say--

Well, that was a bad idea
Or--I didn't look so bad
Or--wow, who's that?

I just forbid my daughter
From dying her hair black
I know I should let her make her own mistakes
But there's a part of me that thinks--

In time
She'll thank me for this