"makeshift example!"
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Gramps exclaimed, “Oh, no,“ very loudly as he read the newspaper in an excited voice, that high pitched exclamation that could only mean that someone we knew had died or someone had been arrested or we had invaded another country or something else catastrophic had happened. I was passing him on my way to the bathroom to take a shower, wash my hair and get dressed to go on our Sunday date to the dollar movie theater in a nearby city. I paused briefly to inquire what horrible thing had happened to cause that kind of exuberant reaction.Gramps excitedly said, “The dollar movie has gone up to a dollar and a half.”Now, that was very bad news. That meant that our every Sunday date was going to cost fifty cents more apiece, making our date cost a whopping six dollars. We had always relied on the bargain of paying three dollars for our hot dog and pop at the big wholesale warehouse and then two dollars for both of us to go to the movie. This was a huge blow to us.I do have to explain to you again that we are not impoverished senior citizens, we just love bargains, a trait that was passed down to us by my dad, the man who always asked for a senior citizen’s discount on an ice cream cone.Gramps was saddened by the news of the hike to a buck and a half for the movie. It suddenly didn’t seem like a bargain anymore, even though the price at a regular theater is eight dollars now. I guess he had visions of the prices regularly being hiked sky high.We quickly discussed whether we should continue to frequent such a high priced movie theater which charges a dollar and a half to view a second run movie. We love our bargains. We agreed that we need to stay loyal to the theater because we’ve had such great laughs on our adventures at the dollar movie theater. Also we had seen some very good movies, and a few very bad ones. At least we hadn’t wasted eight bucks on the bad movies.After we agreed that we would continue our Sunday afternoon escapades at the dollar movie, I went into the shower stewing about the price hike. My mind was very judgmental and highly incensed for a little while, but I finally decided that the hike in price was not so bad. As I went ahead with my shower and shampoo I felt much better than I had felt when I entered the shower, trying to stay positive.Have the rest of you senior citizens found that you are forgetting more and more as the years pass? Well, Gramps and I are. Some things we forget to do now are things that we used to do by rote without even thinking about it.After the devastating news from Gramps about the hike in prices at the dollar movie, we were running short on time to get to the movie theater. I had all of twenty minutes in which to shower, shampoo, dry my hair, put on makeup and dress. I convinced Gramps, and myself, that I could do it. I can be very speedy when I have to.Sure enough I was out of the shower, having showered and shampooed my hair in a whopping five minutes. I toweled off my body, toweled my hair and then wrapped a clean towel around my hair to absorb more of the water so that the hair dryer didn’t have so much to dry before I put the four curlers in it that I use to take some of the natural curl out of my hair. I stood in front of the hair dryer, which I have on a neat stand, and put my clothes on while my hair was drying. It’s now ten minutes down the drain. I only have ten more minutes to get ready. I can do it.As I was drying my hair I noticed that my hair didn’t feel like it always does when I fluff it up as I am drying it with the hair dryer. Huh, I thought, must be the new shampoo. The bottle of the new shampoo says that it has some ingredients which will give volume to your hair, a real boom for people with thin hair. I’m not one of those people. I have very thick hair which curls into ringlets all over my head with any hint of moisture in the air, possibly with as much as just the mist from the nostril of a person who sneezes nearby me. No one had sneezed by me, but the curls were tight just from shampooing, and as I was drying my hair it seemed like my hair was multiplying and getting bigger. Must be the volume ingredients, I thought as I continued fluffing it as I was drying it.After a few minutes of drying the hair, I began to put each of the four large curlers into my hair. My hair still felt strange to the touch. I put all four curlers in before it occurred to me to test my hair for that familiar squeaky clean sound that my mom had taught my three sisters and me to do in testing to see if our hair was clean after shampooing.As I stood at the mirror, fully dressed with hair partially dried, the designated hair rolled on the four big rollers, I began to have a funny feeling that I had left something out of my routine. Let’s see, hop in the shower, put shampoo on your hair, wash your body with sweet smelling body wash, rinse your body off, rinse your hair ----------- rinse your hair? Uh-oh, I had forgotten to rinse my hair. I still had volume enhancing shampoo in my hair. No wonder I had so much hair. The volume enhancing ingredients of the shampoo were still in my hair.Now, actually the culprit was the dollar movie being raised to a dollar and a half. I had been so preoccupied with thinking about the raise in price that I had shortcut my routine and skipped the rinse cycle of my hair. It was too late then to retrace my steps and rinse my hair and then do the rest of the routine, I reasoned, because we would never make it to the dollar movie theater if I did.Actually, when I finished drying my hair and brushed it out, it looked great with the shampoo in it. It was dull, but the hairspray helped that and added a little shine. I may have to see if I can get the shampoo company to recommend my procedure to its customers if they want really, really thick-looking hair.The only thing I have to watch for is the next rain. We have had rain in our area for the last five days and if it continues and I get caught in the rain at our grandson’s football game or if I get rained upon on the way to our grand daughter’s volleyball game, it might be embarrassing for the grandchildren to have MeMe walking around with sudsy hair cheering them on to victory. It wouldn’t embarrass me. With all the adventures we have had at the dollar movie, nothing will ever embarrass me again. I’m finally at the age that I can even tell my friends about the time I took a shower with my undergarments still on my body. Yeah, I forgot to take them off before getting in the shower. Didn’t have to wash them in the washer, though. I think I need to slow down a little; don’t you?Gee, this adventure with the shampoo happened to me while I was getting ready to go to the dollar movie. Come to think of it, so did the undergarments in the shower. There must be something about that dollar movie that makes Gramps and me want to laugh at everything and do crazy things.Actually, after Gramps and I discussed the rise in admission price to a dollar and a half to see the movie, we came up with the reasoning that what we can do is go to the movie and pay a dollar and a half on Sunday, then the next week we can go to the movie on Tuesday when the admission is a whopping fifty cents. Our thinking is that when we figure the average of the two admission prices, it averages out to a dollar per movie. So we can still get a bargain by averaging the two weeks. We both feel much better about it now.Going back to the shampoo snafu, the joke was on me this time. Gramps kind of likes my voluminous hair. It kind of reminds him of the beehive hairdo I had when we met and fell in love. That would be a good commercial for leaving the volume enhancing shampoo in the hair, that it makes senior citizens very romantic. It would really increase sales.
Posted by "Dear One, Love God........." at 4:12 PM 0 comments Links to this post Labels: 2007 adventures of Meme and Gramps, Sept. 9
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