The Perfect Shampoo

When I was fourteen years old, I discovered the "perfect shampoo", and once I found the one that made my hair exactly the way I wanted it, my family started to buy it... in Costco sizes. The orange bottle will forever be an ingrained image in my brain when I think of my early teenage years. Forget using my friends' shampoo after sleepovers, and god forbid hotel products.

I remember asking my mom in August of 2012, before I embarked on the biggest adventure of my life, if she could send me my "perfect shampoo" periodically throughout the year. I was days away from getting on a plane, immersing myself in a new language, meeting a completely strange family, leaving everything I knew and loved, and I swear to god that was one of my biggest predicaments.

I got to Spain and I ultimately faced what would have been my biggest fear, that my travel sized shampoo bottles were not going to last me through the next ten months. I parked myself on the bathtub ledge, and sat there. I contemplated. There were three bottles. Yellow. Blue. White.

I chose white, but only because there was no orange option. Of course. I patiently awaited my possible horrific first day of school in Valladolid, Spain, where I was expected to start school the next morning. To my surprise, my hair looked, perfect, maybe even better. I was a little uncomfortable, straying off the path a bit, but to say the least, it was worth it.

I asked my new host family what kind of shampoo it was, so I could buy some later that evening.

It was dog shampoo.

I kid you not, my biggest problem in life was that I was leaving my "perfect shampoo", and ends up there is foreign dog shampoo that i had just said was a comparable match.

I learned a few things from this awfully embarrassing hair crisis.

First, I need to raise my standards.

Second, I ended up using whatever random shampoo product my host family bought that week, and I realized the real importance of this situation. There was none. I have learned to embrace every bad hair day with a grain of salt, and i guess I've learned to take that risk. Maybe sometimes that means choosing the white shampoo bottle, or sometimes that means spending your junior year in Spain.

Through and through, I have come to realize that sometimes all you really need is a little hotel shampoo to keep you humble.

It's good to be home.