My daughter learns that showercaps aren’t waterproof

As part of a new campaign I’m involved with, I had to pop into the local Walmart to buy a new Android tablet. Yes, another tablet. Soon I’ll have them all! More seriously, the Broomfield Walmart is an interesting place to visit because the customers are so different from the regular Boulder folk we encounter every day. More blue collar.

Not quite “People of Walmart”, thankfully, but a lotta questionable tattoos and kids running around like lunatics. I don’t mind, and I’ve spent plenty of time in the Missouri Ozarks so I can spot a redneck from 50 yards. 🙂

My 10yo K- and I needed something to do so we decided we’d go there together and pick up a few things we needed in addition to the new tablet. She really likes Walmart, actually, because there’s such an extraordinary variety of products. And with the back to school sales, we picked up some new school notebooks at the remarkably low price of $0.25/each.

One of the things K- and I had been talking about earlier in the evening is personal hygiene and the optimal frequency of bathing for boys and girls. Which is an oblique way of saying that she might not bathe as often as perhaps she should. “It’s my hair, that’s why I don’t like bathing. I don’t want to wash it every day or two!”

Sounds like a showerc ap was in order, so we found one while we were at Walmart, a fairly nice one, better than what I remember my Mum using, actually. I’ve never used one myself. Neither had K- ever used one, as became apparent once we got home…

One of her latest fascinations is temporary hair coloring. Not her full head of hair, but just a clump or set of strands. She’s a dirty blonde at this point in her childhood (she started out a platinum blonde when she was little) so she’s been playing around with reds and oranges as highlight colors. Using markers to achieve the effect, rather to my surprise.

Walmart, however, has hair “chalk”, so K- spent a lot of time gazing at the packaging and talking about how it works.

It’s a neat idea, actually, but we opted not to buy any this time, rather to my surprise. Instead, we picked up a few new (washable) markers so she can continue to try different colors and highlights.

But not tonight. Tonight she wanted to try out the shower cap and have a shower. Until at the last minute she changed her mind and decided to have a bath instead.

With, you guessed it, her shower cap on.

Quite to her surprise post-bath, she got out, took off the cap and her hair was all wet!

Most distressing: she couldn’t color it while it was wet.

I had to suppress a laugh, though. Who would think that a shower cap is waterproof at all, let alone sufficiently waterproof that you could put your head underwater and your hair would stay dry?

So the end of our grand Walmart adventure ended up with a wet head and a rather chagrined girl who realized she should have known better.

If only she’d actually stuck to her plan of having a shower with the shower cap!