Hair....and Not the Musical.....

I have had a lifelong love/hate relationship with my hair.

I take that back. It's been ALL hate.

I should have known I was in trouble from a very early age, when old blue-haired ladies would pat me on the head and say, "Oh my, what beautiful curly hair."

It is curly.

It ain't beautiful.

I grew up in the age of Farrah Fawcett and long, flowing, STRAIGHT hair. My hair has never flowed, it will never, ever be straight, and most of my life it wasn't long, either. My mother wouldn't let me grow my hair long because it was a b-i-t-c-h to brush. Still is.

I was sort of in style in the 10th and 11th grades, when afros were all the rage for a while. Man, I can DO an afro. Just let my hair dry into its natural, kinky little ringlets, then pick it out as big as I want. I'll have to see if I can dig out those school pictures; otherwise you might not believe me.

In a previous wifetime, my ex insisted I let my hair grow out. I tried to convince him that is exactly what my hair does, it grows OUT. It just doesn't get long. As it grows, it just kinks up more and more, the corkscrews get tighter, and the whole mess gets frizzier. At its longest, when my hair was wet I could pull it down to about the middle of my back. It never got much below shoulder length when it was dry, however. If there is a positive, this was during the big-hair days of the 80's, so it didn't look all that freaky.

He was a tyrant about hair (among other things). When I finally took the bold step of cutting it short, I made sure I let him see it for the first time where there were other people around. I'm telling you, he was stupid about it (among other things). When I walked in to this little bar, he saw me in the mirror. He picked up his cigarettes and walked out without a word. He didn't speak to me for three days. On the third day, he came in late from work (or the bar, I can't remember which), and I was watching t.v. with a paper sack over my head. I had cut out little eye holes, and he started laughing. I don't think it was really the hair; it was just another form of control.

When Hubby and I married, he said it was my hair and he wasn't going to tell me how to wear it. He said since he didn't HAVE any hair, it wouldn't be right to tell anybody else what to do with hers. I kept it cut short mainly because it was easier to deal with when I'm cycling. However, when our pictures were scrolling through the screensaver one night, I caught a glimpse of us on one of our cruises.

Man, I didn't know I ever cut it THAT short. That was one ugly picture.

So last year I decided that I would let my hair grow out one more time, possibly the last time before I'm 50. About 6 months into the process it occurred to me that I should have documented it with pictures, at least weekly. Too late now.

It's in that in-between stage right now, too long to just let it dry naturally and too short to put into a decent ponytail. I just hope I can remember how to French braid it when it gets long enough for that.

Best of all, however, Hubby bought me a new motorcycle helmet for my birthday last year, a Harley-Davidson helmet. It has a ponytail cutout in the back.

Maybe by spring, I'll be sporting a ponytail to go with the helmet.