My children are pretty representative of their generation, a bit baffled by the Coronavirus situation and anxious about the future. When are we going to open things up again? Are businesses all going to survive? What’s the job outlook for 6-12 months? 24 months? When can they hang out with their friends? While the day to day of a stay at home quarantine is characterized by a lot of boredom, the deeper anxiety is affecting everyone, and unsurprisingly at that. Frankly, you don’t need to be 20 years old to have all of those questions floating around in your head, that’s for sure.
Much of their boredom alleviation has been online multiplayer games. K- is a fan of Fortnite and plays with her friends while chatting on a parallel Facetime connection, Gareth has found the fun, goofy game Rocket League (think soccer in cars) and Ashley has the calmest and most zen-like of all of them with her Animal Crossing island on her Nintendo Switch. Me? Movies, indie cinema, TV series and episodic shows, even some documentaries, along with reading books and going for walks.
What surprised me with them a few weeks ago was their sudden zeal for “quarantine hair“. Ashley’s pal Dylan started the trend by dying his dark hair a shocking white/blonde because he was stuck at home so… why not? Gareth decided to do the same and, a week later, it was Ashley’s turn.
Here are a few photos to memorialize the great hair dying adventure of 2020, starting with Ashley prepping Gareth’s hair:
Remember the color of his hair in that picture. Like mine, a dark brown. Not for long, though!
The dye process involves putting fairly caustic chemicals on your hair then letting it sit. The longer it sits, the more dramatic the outcome. Gareth did his hair twice for a big bang of change. And oh, the change he got.
First though, once the time was up, it was time to rinse, which Ashley quite enjoyed:
End result? Well, remember that brown hair? No more:
Quite the change – I barely recognize him. It does look really good, though, no question. A little bit cinematic Yakuza, particularly if he added some badass tattoos on his neck and arms, but fortunately home tattooing isn’t (yet) a thing during this quarantine.
It wasn’t much later that the tables turned and Gareth helped Ashley with her hair dye:
Ashley sought a more subtle highlights effect which ended up being barely noticeable, but I applaud her caution, even if it’s true that you can just grow out a bad dye job. Still, with long hair and the average person growing a mere 6″ inches of hair/year, that could take a while! K-, for her part, had already just had a big, fancy hair dye job called an ombré, where it started with her natural color and gradually transitioned to a lighter color on the lower half. That was just weeks before we were told to stay home and it cost waaayyy more than a box of hair dye at the beauty shop.
With all three kids having their hair dyed, the attention naturally turned to me. And they promptly offered to “get rid of the gray” to which I responded “no thanks, I’ve earned this!”. In a month? Who knows. But for now, that’s where our hair is during month two of our home quarantine adventure.