Red Rain

I am ready for lots of things. A hurricane, for example. I am completely ready for a hurricane. I have propane lamps, a stockpile of water, Gatorade and enough Chef Boyardee products to keep me fat and happy on ravioli and canned ziti for the rest of my days. I am also ready for any swimming emergencies that may arise, for I have lots of supplies! Yes! I have bathing suits and swimcaps and goggles and earplugs. I will swim to you. Just call me, and I will swim to you!

I am not entirely ready to talk about my hair. But I will try. In fact, I will start by telling you that Squiggy has kind of lost his mind, and kicked off this evening’s coloring session by telling me about the time he pulled a tampon from the bathroom garbage can and started swatting flies with it. (“I mean, I noticed every time I killed one, there was blood on the wall and then I realized, I WAS SWATTING THEM WITH A BLOODY TAMPON.”) Or how he asked me to ghost write his memoirs (“So, like, if I give you some tapes with random stories on it, can you like, turn them into a book and get it published?”). What’s most important here are the words “coloring session.” Color. COLOR. I mean, I can kind of live with the fact that when I walked out of there I resembled Carol Brady: The Bouffant Years, because when I style it myself and get rid of the, ah, volume, it’s actually a cute haircut. But there is the issue that when I got home, Ad stared at me without saying a word for what I’m guessing was a full minute, then silently – stonily, I might even say – picked up a box of Mike & Ike Hot Tamales and held it up to my head.

It matched.

My head is radioactive. I mean, if you prefer, you can call me Ronald MacDonald. This happened because I mentioned that I was going swimming, after Squiggs asked me why I was so skinny (hooray!) and then ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE. As in, there were lots of fits thrown about the dangers of chlorine on my blondish hair, and did I really – REALLY – feel like walking around with a head that resembled peat moss? Well, I mean, of course the answer was no, because really – peat moss. No one even likes peat moss, as it can’t hold a candle to Spanish moss, which hangs there all pretty and delicate-like off of big, southern trees in glamorous places like Savannah and it’s all Forrest Gump and everything, while peat moss is pissy, green and garden-variety. It’s so Erie, Pennsylvania. Decidedly unpretty.

So I agreed to a nice, soft, auburnish browny red until the swimming subsides, because I wasn’t ready to be Erie. I wanted to be Savannah. Instead, I am South Beach. Or more specifically, I am a transvestite dressed up to resemble Lindsay Lohan-cum-Carol Channing who is roaming the streets of South Beach.

In other news, I went back to the dentist today to have a filling filed down, as it was hitting high, and have you ever had a filling screw up your bite? Yeah. It’s not unlike chewing on a roll of tin foil, and even tonight, when the Squiggmeister foiled my head, I cringed, because it was reminiscent of the pain I felt every time I even thought about potato chips. Anyway, the hygienist who saved my life and also enabled me to eat foodstuffs other than yogurt refused to move her mask from the half-mast position, and had an accent of indeterminate origin and yet, that didn’t stop her from chatting me up and ah, hugging me. Our opening scene, after a brief description of my problem, went something like this:

Hygienist: “Oh my schursghlket! I rourve yelly FLERRYRINGS!”

Jonniker: “I’m so sorry – you mean I’m not getting Novocaine?”

Hygienist: “No! NO! I rourve yelly FLERRYRINGS! Rie ravey RECKLACE RAT MARCHESIMO!”

And then she hugged me and started petting my arm. And then stroked my hair. And hugged me again. And then rubbed my arm again. And then – you guessed it – she HUGGED ME AGAIN. Was she deranged? About to pull a tooth without Novocaine? Trying to tell me I needed a root canal?

No no. She liked my earrings. And she has a necklace that matches them! Of course. Taking advantage of her apparent, err, affection for me, I took the opportunity to ask her if the sparks from the drilling could at all sort of maybe, I mean, POSSIBLY, start a fire in the exam room, given that there were what seemed to be three tall OPEN oxygen tanks right next to my chair? After all, it’s what took down the ValueJet flight over the Everglades, and why not a dental office? WHY NOT? But, ah, apparently not. Or I’m guessing not, because she replied with:

“RO RO RO. ROXYGENEO ARCHTY. SEE?”

And then she turned one of the tanks on and off, on and off, I supposed to demonstrate the safety of highly-flammable gases shooting through the air in a room that once bore the smoke of my burning, flaming flesh, and so I simply brought her attention back to my filling, yes, THE FILLING. DRILL, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND DON’T KILL US. And by the way, at this point, I realized that the person wielding a drill is in fact, not a dentist, and in fact, is a hygienist who doesn’t really speak in any sort of coherent manner (“FLELLYFLARTUGAS!”). And yet, she was holding a drill over my open mouth. And a giant needle. Yet shockingly, she fixed the problem, and when I open my mouth now, I no longer cringe in terror of a light breeze that will set off my pain receptors like a dinner of aluminum foil and sand.

It could be so much worse, red hair and all. Happy Wednesday!

*Peter Gabriel

20 comments January 30th, 2007