Hairy Extremes

At first I thought I'd be getting pretty brave when posting my graduation picture along with my Cher era photo. Now that I'm doing it, I realize it doesn't matter. It's worth a laugh or two. Hair is just that-hair.We all have photos of our hairstyles and cringe at how we wore our hair at certain times. But each particular time tells about a chapter in our life. It might be a good or bad or sad chapter but all those chapters add to what is our own, one-of-a-kind story and our hair is a part of that story.

When I was born my parents told me I had so much hair that the nurses kept it gathered on top of my head in a 'whisp.' In fact the nurses called me Whisteria. As I grew into a little girl, my mother often French braided my hair. When I was a pre-teen she took me to a barber shop and had my hair chopped off into a sort of Buster Brown hairstyle. That's the way it stayed until I became a teen. That's when I took over. Most every night in my freshman year I'd go into the kitchen-take out an egg-crack it, strain out the yolk, and then mix the white of the egg with some water. Then I'd go into my bedroom, shut the door and do my hair up on big rollers. I'd comb the egg white mixture into every strand before wrapping that strand around a roller and pinning that roller to my head with hard, plastic picks. Then I'd wrap a net around the rollers and sleep on them all the while telling my mother that Yes-I was doing my homework. In the morning, I'd carefully take each roller out. I really didn't have to be careful since the hair was like cement. It wasn't going anywhere which is what I wanted. I'd tease it all into a beehive as tall as I could get it-then spray that hive and off I'd go to school thinking I was just about the coolest chic ever. I wore that style for the longest time. It changed when Sonny and Cher made their debut. No more egg white for me. I wanted my hair as long and straight and free as it could be. That stage lasted for a quite awhile. A part of that stage included the discovery of long, pretend braids. A friend of mine and I would pull our hair high up to the top of our heads into one long ponytail. Then we'd wrap the fake braid around it-tuck the ends of real hair underneath it, secure it with bobby pins and think we were pretty cool in our hot, fake braids. Once I married and had children, hair time was about no time. When they were young I cut my hair all off and permed it into tight curls. That way it was no bother. They couldn't pull on it. If I didn't get to wash it, the curls looked just fine or so I thought they did. I didn't have much spare time to check..

Funny how hair tells a story. If my hair was writing a book it would include the times my sister-in-law and I used a boxed treatment for streaking our hair. We're lucky our hair didn't fall out since keeping track of the time was something we were not too good at. There'd also be chapters on long hair and short hair; streaked hair and curly hair and probably more than one chapter on the use of egg whites for gluing one's hair into place.

I still have this little inkling gnawing at me to go red. Not a bright red. Just a nice auburn kind of  red. I know when the mood hits-that will happen! And then that will be another chapter.