Curly Hair Madness

January 24, 2009

Have you ever noticed that women with curly hair want straight hair and women with straight hair want curly hair? What’s up with that? I happen to be on the curly hair side. I’ve been enjoying the cooler weather recently because the humidity is low. If you can imagine, I use a curling iron to straighten my hair! Now there is something just wrong about that. But as with many things in our culture, this is just one more thing that is backwards. Everyone has heard the comedians saying, “You drive on a Parkway and park on a driveway”. Well I straighten my hair with a curling iron. For me it’s pretty easy, I do the same thing everyday. The difference now is that with the humidity low, my hair stays straight. Well it’s really more straight-ish.

The strange thing about my hair is that the curl is different on different parts of my head. The bangs and sides are not as curly, but the back is very curly. Because of this as a child my mother insisted that it ALL be curly. That meant a Toni perm. Oh nooooo! I still shudder as I remember the box on the kitchen sink. As if it wasn’t bad enough that I had to sit still for hours, as she placed tiny curler after tiny curler into my hair, the solution smelled awful. I’m sure there are many of you out there that just had a flashback. Remember that pungent smell that burned your eyes as well as your head? Unfortunately this was the good part. Once this was all done my mother than had to remove all those little curlers. This was never without incident. The curlers would always get tangled and before it was over there were tears. Mine of course. Then it really got ugly. I mean that sincerely, ugly! My hair, I looked like the poster child for Little Orphan Annie! Instead of white circle eyes, I had big blue circle eyes. (All pictures were in black and white in those days and my eyes just looked like holes.) The only good thing about this entire experience, all the other little girls in my class looked just like me. I think all of our mothers banded together and ordered a case of Toni perms.

We were all reassured that “in a few days” the curls would loosen and it would be pretty. Well “in a few days” turned into weeks and I was still waiting for the pretty. Then it happened, one day I got up and I looked normal and yes even pretty. I couldn’t wait to get to school and show the other girls that I really did have pretty hair. I held my head high and ran down the hall to the kitchen for breakfast. I was so pleased with my normal hair. As I was about to start what was surely to be a great day, I was stopped dead in my tracks. There on the kitchen counter sat a brand new Toni perm! And so, the cycle continues.