A Tale of Two Hair Colors

Sort of. My mother came down on Wednesday to hang out with me and the girls and to escape from her reality for a bit. She had told me the day before that she was going to color her hair her natural color. I don't really understand that. If it is your natural color no chemicals should be involved. Anyway, she wanted to get rid of her gray. She has dark brown, almost black hair. She thinks her hair IS black.  She colored it black. She is considered a senior citizen, now sporting black hair. I love her, but it made her look a lot older than she actually is. So I told her we needed to fix it.  She agreed with me. Rather than go to a salon she wanted to go to the local beauty supply chain and do it ourselves. Not a problem. We get there and she has to get a color stripper to remove the black and then color to put on her stripped hair, then a deep conditioner to try to keep from really frying her hair. The girl that was helping her acted really bothered by mom's questions and was really young. She helped  my mom pick a color that was REALLY dark brown. I tried to point that out, but who am I? We get home and strip her hair. All is well, the black came off and her hair was a light strawberry blond. That is not what she wanted so we proceeded with applying the color. As soon as it came in contact with her hair it started turning purple. I told my mom I wouldn't leave it on very long.  She wanted to leave it for ten minutes. OK! Well after time was up she washed her hair, deep conditioned it and came out with...BLACK hair! She was very upset.  She had already paid for the first box that messed up her hair, now she had spent $21.00 trying to correct it for nothing. She called the store and spoke to someone that sounded knowledgeable and decided to go back the next morning and try again! She got more stripper, and a lighter, but still dark, brown. I tried arguing with them that when her hair was stripped it really soaked up the color and shouldn't she pick a light brown. Since I am no stylist no one wanted to hear it. So, here we go again. I stripped her hair, we applied the color and again it immediately started turning purple.  I told momma to wash it out after 5 minutes. She listened and guess what?  BLACK hair! So now after spending another $8.00 we are back at square one. I told her she should have gone to my salon and gotten it colored.  I live in a small town and it only costs $35.00, she looked tearful. I felt bad for her. I think she is going on another hair color quest today.  I really hope it works out for her,