How many shades of grey?

I haven't read the book, "Fifty Shades of Grey" by E.L. James,  nor have I heard much about it except that it may involve some Seattle folks living on the edge. Don't know. Don't care.

But as I gaze around the dining room at the retirement home where I live in Port Orchard I see a plethora of shades of grey.  Okay, some blue and a couple of pale purple. The gents and some of the ladies don't bother with the special shampoo available to tone down the yellow in white hair.

But some of us old ladies like our white hair, which is really grey hair scared white, to be really white. So we invest part of our grocery budget into products like "shimmer" and Joico's "Color Endure", a violet hue that costs an arm and a leg, but is worth it. Costs about the same as a nice bottle of wine, but the wine… I buy Two Buck Chuck (that's three bucks in Washington which is a nice taste for me by Charles Shaw) and you can only find it at Trader Joe's  Since I don't drive anymore (big cheers can be heard blocks away from grateful motorists) I have to get one of my kids to take me to the store for my self-prescribed prescription. Difficult to carry home a case of wine on the Ridgemont Apartments' bus.

So back to the grey hair products. I was in a beauty shop some years ago in Arizona where I first learned of the product. A guy about my age maybe a few years younger, came in to ask the shop owner if she could make his beard a little whiter. He had a Santa Claus gig at the local mall and his beard had been getting a little yellow. She said she couldn't do his beard, but if he went to a shop nearby they might do it for him.

He was a little ticked off when he heard that and told her, "You are treating this woman's hair with that shimmer-stuff and you can't do my beard?" She tried to explain that facial hair was not her specialty and didn't want to risk it. She apologized, he left in a huff.

I kind of sympathized with him and if I wasn't all drippy in a hairdresser chair I would have followed him out and told him to go to the drug store and buy the shampoo and do it himself. Oh, well.  I hope Santa's beard was snowy white that very hot Christmas in Arizona.

I don't think the book I mentioned earlier is about white bearded Santas or little old violet haired ladies, but I may check it out at my library when it's available.