Sham-Poo-Poo

I was just counting how many bottles of shampoo and conditioner I have perched on the rail above my shower:

There's twelve.

Twelve bottles, ranging from almost new to technically empty. How has this happened, this ridiculous situation?

The build-up has been gradual. Over the last year my hair and I have been bickering with one another. It just feels, and then looks, crappy all the time. My hair, with which I have always had such a happy-go-lucky relationship, has turned high maintenance and finicky. In desperation to bring peace back to the situation, I would do the only reasonable thing and ditch the current hair products for something that promised more of a commitment to my happiness. But a few weeks later (sometimes not even that long), the same betrayal and the whole process would start again. The result is this wall of bottles standing shoulder to shoulder over the shower door. The family is left to scrub up with whatever is leftover and right now they have an impressive department store of choices.

I recently got a bunch of hair cut off because long hair and heat-to-murder-by don't mix well. As the poor woman fought with my angry tresses she asked which brand of shampoo I was using. All of them, would be the most honest answer, but instead I just picked one.

"Yeah," she mused as she tore, not so nicely through a tangle, "You can't use that anymore. Actually, you're done with anything from the store."

This wasn't news to me, because as you've probably guessed, I've been through everything "from the store", except the stuff that smells fruity, because bugs chase me like I'm walking cotton candy. But even so, I braced myself for the pitch. I would have to buy some super-special and by the way, very-expensive and while were at it, only-available-here, type products which would miraculously solve all my woes.

Ah, but this hair professional has a bit of drug pusher in her. What she does instead is ply me with enough samples to last literally for weeks. "Here, give this a try. And it's 40% for the rest of the month, if it works out. It should help a lot."

Free samples? Designer goods on discount? Baffled, I stuffed my purse and then pockets with the multitude of samples, mumbled my thanks and wandered away. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. How lovely!

The long and the short of it is that this new stuff, so far, seems to know all the lovey-dovey words my hair needs to hear. But this is still the honeymoon phase. I can feel those twelve bottles up there, smirking down. "Whatever sister", They seem to say, "That little guy will be with us before you know it". I tip my head back in the water to drown out their predictions and hope, hope, hope they are not right.