Common Misconceptions

I've always wanted a career that had nice perks for me. And my friends. I thought I hit this with the travel agent thing. But being a travel agent has surprisingly few perks. And for my friends, even less perks. Besides my knowledge of airline policies and how to work the system, I didn't have much else to offer.

Being a hairdresser will surely be different. I've been excited to see people practically salivate when I tell them I'm going to beauty school. I guess with this economy everyone is trying to save a buck or two. And hair can get expensive, so having a friend in the business would be handy.

However, people seem to forget that I don't know what I'm doing yet. Just because I've gone to school for 1.5 months does not mean I'm skilled enough to tackle all hurtles hair has to offer. I think I have at least 10 people waiting for me to gain some knowledge so I can do their hair for them. And the amount of people willing to let me "practice" on them is almost funny! It's perfect though, because I need the practice. Believe me!

About 2 weeks ago my friend Chloe called me excited to color her hair brown. She has been blond with a partial weave for a while, and was looking for something more cost effective. Which I totally agree with because the amount of money she was spending on highlights was comical. Anyhow, she wants me to color her hair for her. That night. With some hesitation I told her we had not covered that chapter in my class yet and I didn't know anything about hair dye. She was eager and excited though so we headed to Target and just got a box. She HATES red hair, so we went with a ashy brown. No my personal preference, but hey different strokes for different folks right?

Except this stroke was not so good. Because by the time we were done she had some dark hair. But it was also green. Yes it was green brown hair. I was flabbergasted. After doing some googling, it turns out that when going from blond to brown if red is absent hair will turn green. Good to know! Somehow my friend Tessa got involved. Tessa has an aunt who does hair, so with her coaching Tessa thought it would be a good idea to go to the beauty supply store and buy some professional hair color to fix it. At this point I removed myself from any liability. Have you ( with the exception of actual hair dressers) ever looked at the hair color in the beauty supply store? It's like it's in Greek! Numbers and letters and things you have to mix together. I tried to read the hair color chapter in my book, and that might as well have been in German too.

So I agreed to go to the supply store, and help try to fix Chloe's hair but stated for the record if things went awry it was not my fault. We bought what we thought were the right products and went home to try to fix poor Chloe. After coloring Chloe's hair the second time things went from bad to worse.... she now had red roots with green hair. What? What the heck happened!? We were all sorts of confused. Despite Chloe being ready for the Holiday season early, things were not good. I called my friend Stephanie who is a hair dresser to see if we could fix this. I guess there is something worse than green hair after all. Stephanie walked us though the steps of what we should do to get Chloe back to a normal color. She said, " You guys aren't using a level 20 developer are you?". Nope we weren't. We were using a level 30. I guess you are supposed to use a level 10 developer when going from light hair to dark hair. Who knew? Not us, that is for sure. I told Stephanie this and we had a good laugh. At least we found out why crazy things were happening on Chloe's head. The third attempt at coloring was the charm, and Chloe looks beauteous with her brown hair.

Now we are actually covering hair color in my class. I can't help but feel like I have a little more experience than some of the other girls. You live and learn. Hopefully I won't make that mistake again. And at least now if someone wants fun festive Christmas hair I know how to give it to them! :)