A CURIOUS PERSON'S LAMENT

In this world there are curious people. And then there are researchers. Though I would like to believe I could be a researcher, all evidence suggests that my rightful place is among the curious.

Curious people wonder about things. The readers among them study books. The gregarious ones ask questions. There is definitely a curious person in me. She wonders how anybody ever dreamed up the idea that words could travel along a wire. She wonders how the dryer manages to eat only one sock in any given pair. She wonders what kind of psychologist she would have been if she had not found the Hope Foundation. And last Sunday, in the half hour it took for the chemical reaction that would bind the Dark Ash Blonde dye to her hair, she wondered if blondes have more fun.

In an act of bravado, with boldness obliterating self-awareness, She announced a plan to spend the day studying the matter. In short, she thought she was a researcher. She had, unfortunately, forgotten something experience has already tried to teach her several times. She had overlooked the defining characteristic that separates the curious people from the researchers. That characteristic is planning, also known as forethought.

The thing I admire most about researchers is the way they channel their curiosity. Like us curious ones, they notice peculiarities all the time. They wonder what is happening, or how things came about, or how they might be different. But they don’t go forward, pell-mell and headlong. They think about it. They ask people about it. They make a plan. They apply for funding. They get paid while they study. If they have theories about the discoveries they plan to make, they keep them to themselves until it comes time to publish in a professional journal. Toasted and lauded by their peers, they leave us curious ones starry-eyed and envious, wondering how they do it.

Fifty-odd hours after the union between the Dark Ash Blonde Dye and my hair was consolidated, I remain curious about whether blondes have more fun. I might have been able to tell you the answer had I not messed up the research design. It was corrupted before I even began my day of study. In my rush to find the truth, I had overlooked the significance of a pattern that has been repeating itself for more than ten years. What I should have recognized, what I should have inferred from the information everyone gave me, was that Sunday was not the first time I had been blonde. It was simply the first time I administered a product with Blonde on the label. I now understand that, over the past dozen years, I unknowingly became a blonde over and over again. That transformation happened gradually, showing itself approximately every ten weeks. Not knowing that I was blonde, I failed to check to see if I was having more fun.

You may be wondering how I came to this conclusion. Well, the answer is both simple and surprising. You see, every time I dyed my hair Light Golden Brown, somebody would say: “You coloured your hair. It looks good.” The difference was apparent to the discerning eye. It happened over and over again. But this time, not one person commented on the difference. What’s more, people admitted they had not noticed a change when I drew their attention to the dying.

Now the optimist in me is considering an interesting theory. Perhaps I was wrong in assuming that I was going grey. Maybe I was simply going blonde. I am curious about that. Maybe I should study it! On the other hand, maybe somebody else should.