When I was nine I remember singing that "I'm gonna wash that gray right outta my hair," Clairol Loving Care jingle to my mom as she paraded around the house with hair dye on her roots and that goofy-looking plastic cap on her head. I thought I was hilarious. (I learned early on that my mother and I have very different senses of humor.)

But all these years (decades!) later, that catchy tune still resonates with me and because of it, in my mind, covering gray is synonymous with Clairol.

Though I must admit, I've been too in denial to actually use hair dye regularly to cover my grays, which, in recent months, have multiplied from a few stragglers to full-on hairline domination. I noticed this in a photo that was taken of me at my niece's Bat Mitzvah -- why I couldn't tell in the mirror is beyond me, but I guess we only see what we want to see sometimes.

I was lamenting my loss of youth with my friend Brenda at lunch the other day as she flipped through the photos containing the evidence (I was wearing a hat -- my new BFF -- that day). She laughed and told me to grow up and dye my damn roots already.

She also told me she could remove the roots from the photos for me if I wanted to frame a particularly good shot of the family. I told her that Photoshop is for Demi Moore, pas moi. She laughed again (see Mom? I am funny!) and told me that Clairol has gone all high tech and partnered with Shutterfly (the photo sharing website) to create a cool new tool that lets you touch up your roots in photos -- for real!

It's kinda like that magic red eye remover tool, but it covers up grays or touches up root growth on dye jobs. How cool is that? And, it's free.

Too bad "I'm going to virtually touch up the gray right out of my hair" doesn't roll off the tongue easily enough to sing along to.

Of course, going gray isn't all bad. Just ask Jamie Lee Curtis and other celebrities with gray hair.

But I don't think I'll ever be brave enough to sport it. Which is why I better use these tips for covering grays in real life, not just in photos, stat.