Dear Friends, Family and customers,
Now that we are empty nesters (mostly) and the kids are doing well, it's safe to look back at the teen years. What follows is an excerpt from the 2000 Newsletter written eight years ago. We wish you a wonderful holiday season with the people you love. Enjoy.....
“Business is Great, Life is Wonderful, People are Terrific”
The year 2000 marks the year when our family has the distinction of containing three teenagers simultaneously! So what’s it like having three teenagers? They are kind, considerate, responsible, communicative, enthusiastic, motivated, appreciative, loving, pursuing lofty goals and achieving success after success. And life is wonderful and people are terrific. OK, so there are a few bumps in the road, a little sand in the peanut butter, some sharks in the surf, a sniper in the schoolyard.
The truth is that teenagers these days take things to unimagined extremes. Boys wear baggy pants below the hips defying gravity to pull them right off. The crotch lies between the knees allowing only short shuffling steps, which is good because if they lifted their feet they’d trip over the gathered pant legs covering their unlaced shoes. And the only thing preventing a “full moon” in back is the extra long T-shirt covering the butt. The shirt features an emaciated punk-rock band with expressions ranging from boredom to contempt that make Mick Jagger and Keith Richards seem clean cut and wholesome by comparison!
Popular teen fashion has two more adornments we’ve encountered this year, piercing and tattoos. No part of the anatomy is safe from these twin mutilations that have become so widespread. Both Laurel and Natalie wear nose studs now, tiny ones punched through the side of one nostril. Actually, after an initial period of adjustment we came to accept the look and even began to find it attractive. A discrete little jewel on the side of the nose seems almost quaint compared to the eyebrow rings and lip rings and nose rings worn by some.
Barbara and Laurel had an ongoing conflict that raged for most of the year over Laurel’s desire to have her tongue pierced. (“Not while you’re under this roof!”) So, of course, when Laurel moved to Santa Rosa to attend school in September she immediately had her tongue pierced. When we went to visit in October she waited until we had spent most of the day together before revealing the little silver ball that graced her tongue, thereby proving that Barbara’s warnings about garbled speech were groundless. Of course, after that we both thought her speech sounded garbled!
But piercing is easily undone; holes close up and grow back together. Tattoos, however, are permanent and have been outlawed at the Johnson house. And though tattoos have remained taboo, we’ve been slapped with another popular teen-fashion excess: extreme hair!
It started with color. Laurel’s ex-boyfriend, Adam, and Sam jointly decided to dye their hair jet black last spring. At least Adam colored his eyebrows too, but Sam’s blond brows struck a glaring contrast to his coal-colored helmet of hair. Weeks later we would still let out a startled gasp to catch a glimpse of him out of the corner of an eye. Sam must have scared himself in the morning mirror once too often as well because as soon as his hair grew enough to support a butch haircut, he had the black relegated to the barber shop floor.
Later in the year the extreme hair trend turned to styling. When I was Sam’s age Brylcreme was the hairdressing of choice. Clever marketers encouraged copious use of the stuff by suggesting that although a little dab was sufficient, using more would provoke pursuit by feverish girls wanting to run their fingers through your hair. Television ads of the day promoted over consumption of everything! Remember toothpaste piled high like a triple frosty cone? Or shaving crème so thick the razor looked like it was cutting through a snowdrift? Or shampoo lather like a white “afro”…with instructions on the bottle to “wash, rinse and repeat?” (An endless loop if actually followed!)
Sam’s hairdressing of choice is called Ice Spiker, described on the label as “styling glue with wicked grip”. This stuff is used to create a hairstyle that resembles a medieval weapon swung by a chain and shaped like a spiked ball. If a girl tried to run her fingers through this hair she would recoil in pain with bloody knuckles!
Sam returned from summer camp on a day that we were planning to attend the Bar Mitzvah of his friend, Jacob. Laurel convinced Sam to let her dye his hair red before the afternoon service. When teenagers talk about hair coloring, they don’t mean anything so subtle as highlighting, or even color naturally occurring on any human head on the planet. If it’s not a color that glows in the dark then it’s simply not the real thing. Laurel and Sam disappeared into the bathroom with conspiratorial glee and Sam emerged with day-glow red hair styled into pointy spikes so that he looked like a walking firework! The skin on his face and neck shone with pink residue.
“Is that the kind of color that washes out the next time you shampoo?” I asked.
“No, this is the permanent stuff!” he proclaimed with pride. No sissy Halloween washout hair dye for this tough hombre!
“Well you better go get that pink off your face before we go…and don’t forget your neck!” Barbara ordered. As much as Sam was enamored with his hair, he didn’t like his pink skin and disappeared back into the bathroom to scrub around the margins.
“I’ll be glad when they get over this hair thing," I remarked to Barbara as he left.
“At least it isn’t as hideous as the black,” she added calmly, suggesting that at least things were progressing in the right direction. “OK, we’re running late. I’m jumping into the shower right now and we’ll have to stop at 7-11 to buy some nylons on the way,” Barbara announced abruptly and left.
Things have not changed much in the way that we get ready for a social affair from the days when Barbara was hemming her wedding dress on the way to the ceremony twenty-five years ago. True to form, we were dashing around at the last minute. Sam was badgering us to please hurry and Barbara declared that she’d put on her makeup in the car. Quickly, I ducked into the bathroom, grabbed a hairbrush and gave my white locks several hasty strokes before bounding out to the car where Sam and Barbara were already waiting.
We rounded the corner two blocks from home and Sam gasped, “DAD, YOUR HAIR’S RED!” A glance in the rearview mirror revealed bright red streaks standing out in stark contrast to the underlying silver.
“Oh shit!” I exclaimed as the full impact began to register. “You guys left a hairbrush…full of red dye…on the bathroom counter?!” I asked stupidly. The answer was only too obvious.
“I didn’t do it!” was Sam’s instant response as he sensed the guilty party might be the object of unbridled wrath. A little glitter sprinkled on top of the red was all that was needed to complete my new look. Barbara began to laugh uncontrollably but the humor of the situation eluded me at the moment. My mind was racing with possible options and I started to make an abrupt U-turn for home.
“Where are you going?” Barbara sputtered.
“Home,” I said flatly.
“Well at least go by the 7-11 first so I can get some nylons,” she said. New spasms of laughter erupted as she inspected the full extent of the inadvertent dye job. As she disappeared through the store’s door, I imagined the color becoming more and more permanent by the minute. Crisis management teaches not to dwell on how things got to this point, but to focus on the next move. Solutions not blame! (Blame comes later.)
I hadn’t had a butch haircut since fifth grade when Grandpa Johnson used to set up barbershop in the kitchen and give us buzz cuts. I never liked them then, and didn’t think I’d like them any better now. Of course, when the alternative was red hair perhaps it was something I could get used to.
Sam, who had been laughing with Barbara on the way to the store, was silent in the back seat. Teenage males are inclined to laugh especially hard at the misfortunes of others so it was interesting that he was not laughing now. Meanwhile, why was Barbara taking such an excruciatingly long time in the store? Why was everyone inside moving in slow motion? Was she deliberately letting me twist in the wind? Finally she emerged and climbed in the car still grinning and soon couldn’t help but start laughing out loud once again. Sam, now clearly empathizing, admonished, “Quit laughing Mom! How would you like it if your hair just got streaked red?!”
I flashed back to a night twenty years ago when Mister Kent Hair Design tried a home hair-color job on Barbara that went terribly awry. She was nearly hysterical as she left a frantic message on her stylist’s machine pleading for an appointment first thing in the morning. I had never fully appreciated the importance of hair in Barbara’s life until witnessing that sordid scene!
“The label says it’ll come out after forty washings,” Sam said in an honest effort to make the situation appear brighter. More laughter from Barbara.
“Well I’ll just let myself out and you two can go on to the Bar Mitzvah,” I said. Barbara suddenly became incredulous and looked at me like I was blowing things way out of proportion.
“Oh no, you’ve got to come. You can’t stay home,” she said scoffing at my hesitancy to dignify the occasion with red-streaked hair. It wasn’t as though the red wasn’t noticeable. On top of the white it stood out like a missing front tooth.
“I’m not going to temple and a dinner party like this,” I declared.
“Come on Dad, you’ve gotta come,” Sam chimed in, “It won’t be fun it you don’t.”
“Sam, before you didn’t want us to come for fear that we might watch you on the dance floor. Now your chances of being embarrassed just got cut in half.” I replied. It was heartwarming to know that his previous instructions that we stay out of sight at the Bar Mitzvah might not have been completely sincere.
Barbara was still minimizing the horrific color and insisting that I go, and it was tempting to remind her of the Mister Kent incident years ago. But after twenty-five years of marriage I’ve learned it’s not smart to suggest to your spouse that she’s wrong...and especially dumb when you have her dead to rights!
“Maybe we can just find you a really big kippah to wear,” Barbara suggested and started laughing again before she could finish the sentence. If humor and laughter are God’s gifts, given specially to human beings, then I should have been appreciating Barbara’s divine nature just then. Instead, I thought about those tight-fitting eggshell-thin helmets worn by outlaw bikers for minimal compliance with helmet laws. Oversize Yarmulkes! Perhaps we could stop at the local chopper shop on coast highway and buy one on the way.
When the red-streaked hair was finally washed almost all the color came out and when we left for the service, really late now, a few pink tips were the only evidence that remained.
Current family photos, click on image to enlarge...
