I just wanted some shampoo to wash my hair.
That’s all.
It’s that simple, or so I thought.
It should be simple as the directions on the back of the shampoo bottle. Wet hair. Open bottle. Apply shampoo to hair. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
See how simple that is.
Silly me. I should stop thinking anything is simple nowadays.
The last brand I had was the kind that promised to make the mop on my head the envy of every man in America.
Maybe it would have. I didn’t get the chance to find out. I have fair Irish skin or something like that and after a week’s use I developed contact dermatitis.
I am pretty sure that’s not the envy of anyone. The infernal itching, dryness and peeling will drive you bonkers or crazy whichever you arrive at first.
O.K. So, I knew that I had to change shampoos, so I traipsed off to town.
I went in to one of those retail montrositys and proceeded to look for shampoo.
Sometimes, that is not always easy. They put stationary beside potato chips and they are all the time changing merchandise around to confuse us all. Or, at least, that’s my theory about it. I don’t need to be any more confused than I am.
Wonder of wonders I did find the shampoo in the hair care aisle. That was one worry out of the way.
Another one was about to confront me.
There, in the long aisle before me, were what must have been one hundred cobillion products for hair care.
There might have been one hundred cobillion and one, but I lost count after five. I never have been very good at math.
So, I looked for the brand that says “plain.” As in, I will clean your hair, make it smell good and won’t afflict you with contact dermatitis.
I quickly learned there was no such thing.
There was shampoo for dandruff, shampoo for cooties, shampoo for dry hair, damaged hair and oily hair. There was shampoo for men, for women and for children. There was shampoo to create volume, to cure split ends, to create curls and for straight hair, too.
There was shampoo for dyed hair, frizzy hair, frazzled hair and coarse hair.
There were small bottles and large bottles and medium size bottles.
There were red bottles and green bottles and gold bottles.
There were shampoos of all kinds of scents, too. There was mango, apricot, sunflower, cherry, seabreeze, ocean mist, lavender, coconut, strawberry banana, bubblegum, citrus, rosemary and ginger.
There were shampoos used in the finest salons. And, I am pretty sure, somewhere on that aisle there was a partridge in a pear tree.
The partridge probably used bird seed scented shampoo for the record.
Do we really need all that?
It was enough to give me a headache or maybe two.
I have some or all of those things. I have plenty of hair so I have volume. It is turning white at the edges so it is not dyed. That started before I got out of my 30s. When he was a toddler, my nephew brushed at the white hair at my temple and declared: “Uncle Jason! Your hair is turning blonde.” For the record, it has always been black, but I like that explanation. I don’t care what color it turns, I just don’t want it to turn loose. And, I want to wash it with shampoo, if I can find some.
I don’t care for it to smell like a citrus orchard or the ocean. Besides, I prefer the mountains instead. I didn’t see any scents named for the mountains, by the way.
I stood there in the aisle. Perplexed. Bumfuddled. Discombobulated.
So, I did what any one in my shoes would have done.
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe...
Cross your fingers.
I’ll let you know how it works out.
• Jason Deal is a staff writer for The Blackshear Times. Reach him at [email protected].
