A Hair-Greasing Experience

By: Angela Gillaspie Copyright (c) July 2000

This summer my hair is getting damaged and dry. From all the visits to the YMCA's swimming pool, sweating through my son's baseball and daughter's soccer, and constantly pulling my hair up during countless hours of yard work, my hair is reminiscent of the pine straw that I rake up in the fall.

I usually use the Alberto brand hot oil treatment to smoothen out my split ends and to moisturize my parched hair, but this week, Wal-Mart was out of my favorite brand. Undaunted, I purchased a box of a similar brand that claimed to be made of exotic ingredients like almond and jojoba oils.

At home, I carefully followed the instructions by washing my hair and toweling it dry. I bent over the tub and rubbed the heated oil treatment into my hair. It smelled wonderful, but felt really greasy. Oh well, that didn't matter because I was going to soon have luxuriously soft and silky hair.

Wrapping my hair in a towel, I decided to shave off the four-day stubble from my legs while waiting the five to seven minutes as directed by the treatment's instructions. I finished just in time to unwrap my hair from the Barney towel and stand in the shower to rinse my golden locks in the steaming hot water.

Or so I thought.

The water beaded up and rolled off my head just as if I had buffed it with Turtle Wax™. I attempted to run my fingers through my hair and scraped off a white oozing substance with the consistency of peanut butter. A little trickle of fear crept up my spine as I realized that this stuff wasn't rinsing out.

I reached for my shampoo and tried to soap up, but some how the greasiness of the hot oil treatment counteracted the soapiness of the shampoo, so I added more shampoo. Frantically scrubbing, I felt chunks of the goo releasing their grip on my poor hair.

On the seventh shampoo, it dawned on me that I would have to turn my head down and wash the underside of my hair because it felt like last night's lard-coated bean pot. Yuck!

Finally on the tenth or so shampoo, most of the gunk and many handfuls of hair were missing from my head.

The next day, my hair hung limply in oily clumps and the back of my neck started breaking out. At the YMCA, they almost evacuated the pool due to an oil slick by an unidentified person. The lifeguards looked suspiciously around as they added more chlorine to the pool to combat the problem. They probably suspected me because of the bees that kept circling my head attracted by the scent of greasy almond and jojoba oils.

Hopefully I will soon have my dry ratty hair back in place of this buttery coif sitting atop my head. Boy-howdy, I've learned my lesson! I will never again buy an off brand because it makes me have flashbacks to my teenage years when I was greasy and pimply but had much smaller hips.