What a little color can bring

This is a picture of me from last month, right after I colored my hair. Yes, I DID IT MYSELF! I'm trying to cut costs like everyone else. I went to Johnathon the next week for a cut because the fact remains that he can make me look & feel fabulous like no other!! A little Lady Gaga and some funny stories about the life of a gay man and I walk away feeling so full of life and overjoyed at how blessed my life is. I have an internal list of seemingly shallow things that are rather important in my life. Hair happens to be at the top. It's almost a tie with make-up but I think hair is really the first. Don't you dare judge me for it either.

Let me tell you a little story to illustrate why. When I was a youngster, growing up in Chico, I had a very VERY awkward stage. I was tall and lanky. I was uncoordinated and clumsy. I had a big nose that already had hair growing out of it. I had big bucky beaver teeth. I had no butt. I had (& still do) a deformed thumb. When I started into middle school, the middle of 6th grade, after moving to Red Bluff....I still had all of these physical insecurities and then my boobs got huge. I actually started wearing a bra in 4th grade. The boys in my primary class would snap my bra. It was humiliating. By the end of 6th grade I was a D cup. By high school I was a DD. Boys at school ignored me most of the time. They only occasionally acknowledged me and that was only to offer me money if they could see my boobs. What a bunch of jack @##@! Still no butt, still buck teeth, and on and on. You might wonder why I'm describing myself in such a way...Easy, this is how I remember myself because this is what people teased me about every day. The first time I got teased about my nose hairs was in 3rd grade. We were playing Red Rover out in the field. I was standing in the long line when the kid next to me looked at me and said "You're nose is disgusting...I've never seen such a forest in one nostril before." No one told me about nose hair trimmers until I was an adult. That's just mean. Then there was the time on the last day of 6th grade. I had actually just finished school. My mom let me go down to Chico to go to the last day of my old school with my cousin for the big play day. I was thrilled to see my old friends. It had only been a few months that I'd been gone. We were on the blacktop in the middle of a volleyball game when this girl clear across the blacktop yelled across the playground, "Hey that Tanja girl that use to piss her pants in class is back." Everyone laughed. Except me. There was the time in the 7th grade when my social studies teacher was talking about how the color of mankind's skin has evolved over time based on their geographic location. He believed that Africa made black skinned people because they had more sun exposure and over time their skinned had evolved into a very dark pigment. He thought that you should be able to tell the geographic location of your ancestry based on how well your skin tans. I thought this was complete crap (as most things taught in Red Bluff were) and was very confused. I asked him how is it then that my sister would get extremely tan while I would just burn and stay white. We have the exact same ancestry so obviously you cannot tell from tanning ability alone where you're from. He said in front of the entire class, "It's obvious that you are of African descent because you're facial features are much to large to be from any other continent."

I could go on for hours with all the stories of ridicule and insults that lead to the complexity of my complexes. I can tell you this. The only way I have been able to ignore the voices of those bullies,( and I still hear them from time to time), was to have great hair, great make-up and look cute. Something about having great color on your hair and face make me feel like a million bucks. I forget for a moment that I hate my flabby flat toosh. I forget that my belly is now nasty. I can love my enormous nostrils and mouth. I'm happy to be seen by people. I'm happy to be with my husband and my kids. I can get stuff done. If I let my hair go, I'm back to being that awkward kid that picks herself over about every little thing. I just sit around and feel sorry for myself. I'm not saying hair is most important in life. Obviously, it's not even close. But if something as simple as making sure my hair looks good gives me the confidence to be happy in my own skin then it's sooo worth it! I guess the truth is that those that judge me for the fact that I care about how I look really don't know me at all. Maybe they should try a bottle of color and see what it brings them? Bet it's something good!!

As for those mean kids, I have better hair than you...neener!!! neener!!!! neener!!!!