This morning at the gym I had to do something I swore I'd never do. I'd seen other people do it, but I never thought I'd be one of them. Yes, this morning I dried my hair using the hand dryer.During the past few months, I've become "nameless/nodding" friends with some great characters at the gym. We've never said one word to each other, but we are still somehow cordial. I know that Grandma Lucy* (*name changed not for privacy but because I don't know it) will always wear a type of acrylic high heel as she walks from the locker room to the pool. And Laila* will always make up gospel songs and sing them, loudly. And Fred* will always work out in khaki shorts and black dress socks. He may or may not wear a headband. And then Sun Li* (who is roughly 4'11") will always stand underneath the hand dryer as she dries her hair. And it's kind of okay for her to do this because she has about an inch of room between the top of her head and the bottom of the nozzle. But even though she can clear the dryer without bumping her head, it drives me crazy that she does this every day. Probably because I'm always standing next to her, literally less than a foot away, using the hairdryer that's mounted on the wall.
But today it wasn't meant to be. I went to dry my hair and the outlet was pretty much shot. So I tried another one. And another one. Nothing that blows air and emits heat was working ... except for the hand dryer. So against my better judgment, I caved and used it. I underestimated how awkward it would be because I forgot I was 7 inches taller than the woman who usually uses it. I realized I couldn't just flip my hair over and stand under it because then I was a little too far away from it. So for a few minutes I had to basically do wall sits to get low enough that I was directly underneath the hand dryer. And that's definitely what I wanted to do after having done 20 minutes of squats and lunges only a few minutes earlier. So after tiring from that, I finally realized that I could turn the nozzle so that it faced the side. And that was how I became a convert to the hand dryer as a hairdryer. It's just so much easier -- I finally get it! Literally blown away. So the new dilemma is this ... do I let it be just a one-time thing, or do I sacrifice pride for comfort and make the transition to old-lady-hands-free-crazy-looking drying? Tough call, tough call.
I guess my concern is this ... what if I can't stop once I make the switch? In high school, we would take sleeper buses to Colorado for ski trips. And in the mornings when we stopped for breakfast at McDonald's we would make a beeline for the bathroom so we could brush our teeth, wash our face and, yes, wash our hair in the sink. And that was kind of (KIND of) okay when you're 16. But not when you're 28. It would not be okay, for example, if I were running late to work one day and thought, "no worries, I'll just get dressed, drive to work and then wash my hair in the sink and dry my hair with the hand dryer." I feel like that would be frowned upon. So I guess I've talked myself out of it for now. But man, Sun Li* is definitely on to something.
