I plop into the salon chair.

The stylist hovers behind me, explaining what’s going to happen. “Your hair might smoke a bit,” she says. “I don’t want you being alarmed.”

“Like, smoke smoke?” I say.

“Yeah, it’s just the keratin fusing in.”

“And there’s no formaldehyde, right?” I ask.

“Oh there’s formaldehyde. It’s not on your head but it’s created in the off-gassing.” Then she points to a literal gas mask she’ll be wearing.

We sit for a few seconds in uncomfortable silence while I weigh the value of my life against the prospects of divinely frizz-less, straight-ish hair that I will be proud to whip around for approximately three to six months.

“Ok, let’s do it,” I say.

Over the two-hour procedure, I have plenty of time to think about all the Bad Things Like This I’ve Done to Myself, most unknowingly.

There was the time I had the popcorn ceiling scraped off in my 1970’s house and then marched around in the dust for a few days, not knowing it was probably filled with asbestos. I figure that one could catch up to me in twenty or thirty years.

And I remember all those microwave meals my parents fed me, each one lustily heated in the microwave in very-much-BPA plastic, or Tupperware, and of course the Saran Wrap melted into the top of the heated food. Definitely got some microplastics from those years. And maybe some other various other forever chemicals too.

Not to mention that every time I order enchiladas at my favorite Mexican take-out, they microwave them into the styrofoam clamshell to the point where the plastic becomes an epic day-glow orange. But I still eat them.

Which reminds me of the probably 400 quarts of pesticide-y strawberries and peaches I’ve eaten. I buy organic, but take me to a restaurant or someone’s BBQ and I’m going to eat that peach pie there and not question its origin. But there’s a lotta Round Up and God-knows what else in those thin-skinned fruits.

And cheese. Oh god, the cheese. How much rBST has been packed in 50 years of delicious slices of Brie and cheddar? How many farm antibiotics has my body met? A lot, I think.

Not to mention the wine. Sulfites, crop sprays….all mellowing my Merlot.

The keratin hair solution has now been applied, and the blowdry commences. The smoking part comes next, I guess.

Speaking of, while I’ve never smoked, I’ve inhaled copious particulates from my fellow teens smoking clove cigarettes outside movie theaters in the 80s and 90s. 

And then there was the mercury incident in which the thermometer shattered on the floor and I had a jolly old time catching all those crazy cool silver balls that rolled everywhere.

Yes, I think, I am chock full of chemicals and poisons and near-misses and acts of stupidity. Even my make-up before around 2000 was loaded up with questionable ingredients. (And those of you from the 80s and 90s know exactly how we energetically plastered that make-up on in veritable face masks.)

I’ve spent countless hours on couches with fabrics imbued with PFA stain retardants. I’ve drunk from hoses that definitely were lined with lead. I touched the green wires of the Christmas tree lights and then stuck my fingers in my eyes and mouth without washing my hands despite the warning tags: “Lead Warning: Wash Your Hands After Touching.”

I remember the horrible clouds of jet fuel exhaust that used to cloud the plane cabins when we sat on the runways for hours.

And the classic: sitting seatbelt-less in the couch-style seats of 1979 station wagons or leaping up and down in the back bed of tiny 1984 Datsun trucks as they sped down the highway. 

I didn’t meet a bike helmet until the 90s, when I took up mountain biking for a brief spell.

I tempted fate with my entirely unvaccinated status for well over 25 years before I voluntarily got my first tetanus shot.

I met questionable boys in questionable bars and went to questionable places with them.

And of course, all the anti-cancer chemo drugs I took can cause their own new strange cancers to pop up like mushrooms in the lawn. 

As the stylist applies the hot iron and the keratin starts smoking, I put on my own mask and think to myself, “Even when I think I’m being safe, I find out I’m not. So why is knowing I’m not safe any different?”

I think about how we try to control our lives and fates by mitigating exposure and always “doing the right thing,” and then we think somehow we’re so clever to have dodged all the bullets. 

I think it’s more like the bullets dodged us.

There have been a hundred, maybe a thousand opportunities for life to kill me, despite all my best efforts (and ignorance). 

And it hasn’t yet. Not yet anyway.

By the way, my hair looks fabulous….and that counts for a lot.

***

Thoughts on this all, my friends? What are your thoughts about how we constantly try to control our destiny and, in effect, “bargain with the gods?” Please leave a comment below!