I spuddle.

Guess what song is in my head?   If you can’t guess, that means you are young.   Enjoy your youth.   Before you know it, you are humming lyrics that no one around you recognizes.   Because you are old.   Irrelevant.   Past your prime.

So the other day I was on one of those Twitter chat things with other YA writers and someone suggested that to write YA you have to be, you know, Y, yourself.   And if you aren’t Y, then you are… irrelevant.   IRRELEVANT!  It was like a giant hand reached out of my screen and punched me square in the nose, sort of like a sucker punch, but one that was so powerful I was knocked through the back wall of my house like a cartoon character and then run over by a passing bus.

Seriously?

Irrelevant?

And I thought I was just getting good.

For about a week, I let this bother me.  After all, I’m only in my thirties and TRUST ME when I say I remember all the thoughts and feelings of being a YA much like it was yesterday, probably because just yesterday I had a very YA feeling about how my belly folds weirdly when I sit down and if only I had a better, flatter stomach, I’d totally be invited to be on the cheerleading squad.   Well, not exactly like that, but close enough.

Seriously, peeps, I do not think I’m irrelevant.   But having someone who is younger than me and actually hasn’t been published yet, who really isn’t an authority on anything, tweeting in 140-characters or less about my lack of relevance is sitting uncomfortably in my stomach.   So what I did this week instead of finishing BOOT GIRL was to go back to my adult novel.

After all, I’m an adult.

So it wasn’t all bad, that punch in the nose and subsequent flattening, because I did get a lot done.

But now, it’s Saturday, which means that the sprogs are otherwise occupied and I am sufficiently recovered — although still a bit swollen — to go back to what I should be doing, which is writing YA, if only I can get my aged, arthritic knuckles to type out the words.

Mostly, I feel the same as I did when I started writing YA waaaaaaay  back in my 20s.

Except for the strands of grey leaping into my hair, I think I look the same.   This is because my eyes are failing at exactly the same rate as my wrinkles are formng, so I can’t really see them.    Bonus!

Anyway, can’t go having grey hair just yet and I’m too cheap/poor to pay someone else to colour my hair,  so the other day I went out and dilligently spent an hour choosing the EXACT RIGHT hair dye for my hair.  Then I brought it home and threw the instructions away, as you do, if “you” are “me” and have coloured your hair dozens of times before.   Also, apparently, I did not think it was strictly necessary to read the labels on the various tubes and bottles in the kit.   You know where this is going, right?

So after 30 minutes of sitting with the conditioner mixed with the toner on my head and saying, “Wow, this smells great!”, I went to rinse and condition in the shower.   Which is when I squirted the raw, untoned dye onto my head.   Because that other tube?  That WAS the conditioner.

After frantic rinsing to get the burning, toxic goo out of my hair,  I had really soft, still grey-highlighted hair.   Not all my hair is grey.   Just a bit.   I don’t want you to be picturing me wrong and I KNOW you are now desperately trying to imagine how awful I look with an entirely grey head.   Answer:  No idea.

Needless to say, I was pretty depressed and my hair stunk which it will do when you squirt a tube of undiluted dye on it.   So back I went to the store.   Only — gasp! — they did not have my carefully selected colour/brand.   The horror!   The horror!

I commenced looking for something similar.   It took ages, peeps, because every time I found one, there was only one box and I need two because I have long hair.   Such are my bourgeois problems.   FINALLY I found THE ONE!   Hidden!  Behind some other ones!   I was on my knees looking for the second box which I knew would be hiding back there somewhere when an ELDERLY WOMAN SNATCHED THE FIRST BOX FROM MY HAND.

The hell?   Aren’t elderly people supposed to be kindly and gentle?   Instead of chasing her down, wrestling her to the ground, and grabbing it back, I just watched in shock as she hobbled/ran to the counter to pay.  FOR MY PERFECT COLOUR!   In my defense, she was very wiry and moved fast.  I probably couldn’t have caught her anyway.

The whole thing sapped the life force out of me and instead of continuing to care what my hair looked like, I grabbed two boxes of a colour called Coffee Cream because it was on sale for six dollars.

ON SALE, for the record, is not a reason to buy hair colour that will be on your head, oh, FOREVER.   But the elderly woman sapped my spirit!   She did!  I blame the elderly!   ALL OF THEM!

Then I brought it home, followed the instructions and turned my brown hair…

entirely black.

That’s right.

And what’s WORSE than the fact that I look like Morticia Adams is that NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON HAS NOTICED.   That’s right, I went from mid-brown with reddish tint hair to BLACK HAIR and no one, not one single person, noticed.

Which brings me back to the person who suggested that thirty-somethings were irrelevant to YA writing.   Hey, not only are we IRRELEVANT, but we are also INVISIBLE!   Which is actually totally awesome, so take THAT, young person.    THAT doesn’t happen when you are sub-20.

Oh, and next time I see you purchasing hair dye in Zellers?  I’m totally going to snatch it from your hand and make a run for the counter.   That’s the kind of privilege we old folk get to enjoy.   It’s true.   Ask anyone.

Filed under: Me, Myself and I, Miscellaneous, Random Story of The Day