Live and Let Dye

What’s on my mind? Doesn’t anyone dye, anymore? I don’t think they do. They “color” their hair. I don’t, only because I’m indecisive and would probably hate myself two minutes after doing it - the same way I feel after eating a slab of coconut cream pie. 

My hair is still at the “pepper” stage: I manage to hide the “salt” under hats, scarves, and the heads of gigantic football mascots, which is a problem only when my hairdresser forces me to remove it. 

While I’m at it … (Q: While you’re at what, Nicole? A: That’s for me to know and for you to find out) While I’m at it, no one’s  a “hairdresser,” anymore. Now they’re “stylists.” I still call mine a “hairdresser” so she won’t get a swelled head and charge me extra. 

For that matter, does anyone die, anymore? If someone you know recently has, you may want to skip this section. 

Today, people “pass” and are “lost.” The first sounds like lingering flatulence; the second, like they’ve wandered off at the mall. Some people “pass” when errant flower pots dislodge themselves from sixth-floor window sills to crash down on unsuspecting heads (attached to equally unsuspecting bodies) on the sidewalk below. 

Some people really do wander off at the mall, their shrunken bodies found six months later in neglected furnace rooms innocently mistaken for the food court. Dying is never fun, but dying without the pastrami sandwich the deceased so desperately craved in search of the food court … That really is a bummer.  

Some people go to “a better place.” Secular society that we’ve become, that place had better have excellent room service, robes, and turndowns. (Robes? There are robes? I was afraid I’d have to spend eternity in that ratty plaid dressing gown I’ve had since 1992). 

Rarely do today’s obituaries depict the “departed” meeting St. Peter at “the Pearly Gates.” St. Peter appears to have fallen out of fashion, and no one - except He Who Shall Remain Nameless - decorates in gold that much, anymore.

In the whitewashed words of the standard obit, hardly anyone ever drops dead. You never read: “Harvey was a big son-of-a-b****. When he crashed down, he took the downstairs’ neighbors’ ceiling with him.” 

You never see: “As everyone knows, Janis had more creditors than brains. We’ll be taking up a collection at her celebration of life, so BYOB and shake out those piggy banks!” 

Instead, obits tend to put the best face on the worst things: “Phil leaves behind two adoring collies and Muriel, his wife of 56 years, who unfortunately had an unbreakable appointment with her stylist, M. Georges, and so was unable attend Phil’s memorial service …”  

You know …? Maybe I will color my hair. 

© Nicole Parton, 2019