Confessions logo

Shades of Blue

Little changes make a big difference

By Michelle TaylorPublished 3 years ago 9 min read
2
Shades of Blue
Photo by Ben Waardenburg on Unsplash

“Hey mom, could I dye my hair blue? You know like Sherri’s” I asked her one day on my way home from school.

I was in the fourth grade and had been sick and the doctors didn’t know what was wrong with me. She said we’ll see and that she would talk to my dad that night about it. From what she has told me about the conversation with my dad, her pitch was that I had so much going on at the time and had so many tests coming up it’s not really a big request. They both were in agreement that if it made me happy I could do it.

So the next day at work she asked her co-worker Sherri what to do and what products to use. Sherri came in with different colored hair every two weeks, sometimes pink, blue, green, or red, etc. Seeing her hair is what gave me the inspiration to want to dye my hair. She told my mom to use either Manic Panic or Punky Color. Even though my mom didn’t know why I was asking for this she knew that I had more tests and procedures coming up. So she told me that we could do it and we went to the beauty supply store.

When we got to the beauty supply store my mom found the aisle with the dye.

“What color do you want boo?” she asked me.

“I don’t know, I like this one,” I said as I pointed to a turquoise color.

“Okay hun we’ll get that one,” she said. We got the turquoise one in Manic Panic; it was a semi-permanent dye, gloves, brushes, and a streaking cap.

When we got home I changed into my bathing suit and my mom wrapped me up in a towel. “You ready for this?” she asked.

“Yup,” I replied. I had butterflies in my stomach. I was so excited to do this and be the first kid in my class to dye my hair.

We spent the next hour laughing while my mother, who had never dyed hair ever before in her life practiced on me. We decided to just dye my whole head blue, so the streaking cap was out. Then we used the brushes to “paint” the dye on my hair that took too long and didn’t spread the color out enough so my mom just stuck her gloved hand in the jar of blue goop and spread it on my hair. When we were done my mom had me sit for the allotted time while she dyed the ends of my sisters’ hair pink because she didn’t want her to feel left out. My mom had never wanted to leave my sister out and made sure that neither one of us was more important than the other. When the process was over I liked it but it wasn’t blue enough. But it was good enough for now. I ran out to the living room to see what my dad thought of it.

“Daddy, what do you think?” I asked while I grinned ear to ear.

“It looks nice\,” he said. My dad never was much for showing emotion, he knew if I liked it then there wasn’t much else he could say. If I was happy he was happy.

Before I got the idea to dye my hair blue I had been dealing with being sick for years. The doctors did not know what was going on with me and I had been going back and forth to doctors trying to figure out what was wrong. They thought I had an autoimmune disease called Lupus. Lupus, or Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, is a disease where your immune system attacks your healthy organs and connective tissues. There is no cure for Lupus because no two cases are the same. But the doctors could not fully diagnose me because I had not presented with enough of the symptoms, and because it is rare for children to show signs of Lupus; it is normally found in young adults or babies.

While going through all of this I got a really bad flu and it made my immune system go haywire. I got to a point where I was never hungry and when I was hungry food did not taste good to me. I began to lose weight quite rapidly. In fact I went from weighing fifty-eight pounds to weighing forty-four pounds, I was eleven. I looked like a walking skeleton. I lost twenty percent of my body mass in two weeks. I would go to school and kids would make fun of me for being so sick. Former teachers and other parents would ask my mom, “How is she doing?” or “She doesn’t look good.”

I was put on a high calorie diet by my Rheumatologist Dr. Klien-Gettleman, and had to see a Gastrologist. I was also going to have to go through more tests if I couldn’t gain the weight. When I lost all the weight my classmates were horrible. I was taunted and tortured every day. Thankfully my new blue hair distracted my peers from my weight. They made fun of me for my hair, not being sick, which was okay by me. I liked my hair. My fourth grade teacher on the other hand did not.

After about a month of the turquoise color it was fading and looking more green then blue. Kids in the cafeteria were calling me a leprechaun, so I asked my mom if we could dye it again. This time we used a different brand called Punky Color, another semi-permanent dye, in Lagoon Blue it was a lot darker then the turquoise and I loved it. At least I didn’t look like a leprechaun anymore.

After dying my hair again we headed back to Children’s Memorial to see Dr. Klien-Gettleman. My mom and dad went with me while my sister stayed with one of my mom’s friends. The drive to Children’s took about an hour, because the hospital was in downtown Chicago. Once we got there, we had the valet take the car and we walked into the hospital. As I walked in I could tell that this was a children’s hospital because the walls were covered with bright colors, pictures of animals, murals of hand prints, and cartoon characters. There was a McDonalds in the basement, televisions in the waiting rooms, toys everywhere, a gift shop in the lobby, and more televisions with video game consoles in the surgery prep and recovery rooms. Our appointment today was to see how I was doing, even though I hated having to see this woman she always treated me like I was a stupid child and couldn’t understand what was going on with my own body.

Throughout this appointment she explained to my parents that I needed to have a colonoscopy and an upper GI endoscopy, my mom then got into a screaming argument that none of that was necessary and that she would make sure I gained all the weight back. So instead of the nasty invasive procedures, I got nasty horrible prescription weight gain powder.

I did everything I could to gain the weight back; I was eating all day even though it caused issues with my teacher, Ms. Foskus, who singled me out to my whole class. She only allowed healthy snacks, like carrots, or an apple but I needed more calories. My mom would make me homemade muffins from scratch, and milkshakes with the weight gain powder. She did everything she could to make that nasty crap edible and my teacher argued that it wasn’t healthy. When I tried to explain this to her she told the whole class that I got to have special snacks because I was sick, of course it meant more hell from my classmates.

She began to pick on me for everything, my snacks, my hair, taking too many bathroom breaks, missing too many classes. Some days she was worse than my classmates and most of the time they got their ammunition from her, and she thought nothing of it. The whole problem came to a boiling point one day when she loudly told me in front of the whole class that my hair was a distraction.

“You need to wash that out, it is causing a disruption in the class” she said.

The whole class just laughed, I just slumped down in my chair wanting to crawl out of my skin. I mumbled yes mam, knowing that there was no way that I could wash it out overnight.

That night I went home upset, so to cheer me up my mom decided to darken my hair, so once again we dyed my hair. This time we used Atlantic Blue, it was a dark blue that almost looked like the night sky but bluer. I was thrilled my hair finally was the color I had pictured in my head. Although my joy wouldn’t even last twenty-four hours.

Walking into class the next day my teacher decided to start her rant on me as soon as I walked into class.

“I thought I told you to wash that out, not make it darker,” she yelled while my classmates sat and watched their daily entertainment, of my public lashing.

I didn’t really have anything to say. I just sat there trying not to cry and tuned out whatever she was saying. Then there was a knock on the classroom door. It was my mom, she was involved without PTA and did the weekly fluoride treatments, I walked up to her to take my cup and she could tell by the look on my face that something was wrong, so she started with her questions. I told her what my teacher had said the whole time while my lip was trembling trying not to cry. My mom had had enough of this woman and the abuse she had put me through, and luckily for my mom Ms. Foskus really wanted to talk to her, my mom was ready to give this woman a piece of her mind.

“Yeah sure let's go talk in the hall,” my mom said, “Kids start swishing till the big hand is on the two.”

Then they went out into the hallway, to this day I’m not really sure what was said between the two of them. They were yelling at each other loudly but it wasn’t clear enough for us to hear in the classroom. I do know that Ms. Foskus came into class mad and treated me like dirt the rest of the day. And I know that my mom was way more pissed than my teacher was and went down to talk to the principal.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t gain the weight back quick enough, so I was going back to Children’s to see my Gastrologist, Dr. Nelson. I was going to have to have a colonoscopy and an upper GI endoscopy. This way the doctors could look at my digestive track and see why I had lost so much weight, and couldn’t gain it back.

Dr. Nelson asked me, “Why is your hair blue?”

I replied, “Because the kids at school are making fun of me because I’m so skinny, so I dyed my hair so they could make fun of it instead.”

My mom just sat there dumbfounded. She couldn’t believe how smart I was, but she was very proud of me.

Dr. Nelson smiled and said, “Well that’s a great reason to have blue hair then.

Childhood
2

About the Creator

Michelle Taylor

Writing is my passion, it's all I have ever wanted to do. Books and stories have always fascinated me, When I am not writing I am busy being a wife and mom in a small town in North Carolina. I also teach high school English

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.