By Scott Anthony
I would not consider myself a slave to vanity, although I do try to keep my clothing clean and my hands washed, but on the occasions of shaving in the mirror I have winced at the advance of time that is showing in my ever graying hair. I could write this off by allowing that my hair had prematurely begun to turn the corner from dark to white when I was still in my twenties, but it doesn’t make me feel any younger. So one day a number of years ago, I began using store bought hair dye in an attempt to mitigate (read: conceal) the march of time on the top of my noggin. Some people look good with gray hair. Eddie Albert would never have been taken seriously if he had allowed his handlers to hide his famous, silvery mane. My own father-in-law has always had lustrous (but now white-shocked) leonine locks and being a dyed-in-the-wool Cossack, would not think of presenting himself in a made-up facade. But then he cautions me with the old Russian proverb ‘Gray hair, Scott, is a sign of old age, not wisdom.’
What am I supposed to do? When my hair gets longish, the white strands begin to give me a Lord of The Rings Sorcerer sort of visage, which could be misconstrued as a sign of wisdom, but which is off putting to clients I meet. So I keep it ‘athlete’ short and I wear one of my assortment of broad-brimmed hats, not so much for the hiding of the gray, but because, as one friend put it, ‘it makes you look Amish.’
And this is fine at a fishing excursion, a rainy day or a barn raising, but sometimes I take Mrs. Anthony out to dinner or a movie, places where my Indiana Jones hat doesn’t fit in.
A couple of days ago I got my hair cut and was bent over tying my shoe when the ever helpful Mrs.Anthony noted that my head was taking on the resemblance of a confetti-covered kiwi fruit. She offered to pick up a fresh package of hair colorant at the health food store, as she won’t let me use the more popular ‘Just For Men’ stuff, because it apparently has ammonia and some other bad stuff in it. She has done this before and everything was just peachy (actually, a shade of chestnut brown) so when I saw the package in the bathroom, I did the usual procedure, then while it soaked in I made a few phone calls.
The instructions on the package say that one should leave the product in your hair for ‘between 20 and 30 minutes for best results.’ On the phone with my brother, we got into a debate about something dumb like the gross national product of Lithuania and before I realized it over an hour had gone by. I hastily hung up and ran up to the shower. The result was not good.
In the steamy mirror, towel around my neck, I thought I saw Darth Vader.
My hair had become a spiky helmet, tightly wrapped around my head, my face in stark, white contrast. I am a Fuller Brush head. If a giant artist picked me up by my feet and used my head to dust eraser shavings off his sketch of a beanstalk, no one would think it unusual. I grabbed the carton that the colorant came in: DARK chestnut. Along with the extra soak time, the stuff has rendered me so that I can now pass for an Iraqi freedom fighter, which in these times is a nervous proposition.
So now I’m really into hatland. Upon coming home, Mrs. Anthony, sweet, sympathetic that she is, laughed so hard that she was in tears. I love you too, honey, but I am faced with one of three paths. Either I get used to the jibes about getting my head stuck in a wood stove pipe, I go back to the barber and get a ‘shaq-shave’, or I pull my hat down around my ears until Father Time comes to explain the true meaning of vanity.
