A Wild Hair – Hare

I have had a love/hate relationship with my hair all my life. From birth until puberty, it was a battle of wills for my mother and endurance for me. Hours spent in getting pin curls, home perms, gels, hair tape and other unknown feats of magic to whip my board straight, raven black, uncooperative hair to look like the dancing curls on Shirley Temple’s head.

Then…puberty arrived and things changed not only in my body, but my hair as well. The color stayed the same, but suddenly it had a mind of its own. What had once been something that refused all manner of torture to coax a tiny bit of curl from its strands was now a wild untamable mess. Curls where I didn’t want them, frizz the minute I walked outside the door, bangs that would not stay straight or in their place … why me … why now when hair mattered and the hair that mattered was long, straight, shiny and looked like Cher. Mine looked like Janis Joplin on her worst day even when I used a ton of hair gel, wrapping it around my head with long bobby pins to hold it in place and a coke can sized bright pink roller on top of my head each night. For about a minute when the wrappings were undone and the beast brushed, it was straight. Most days it didn’t last through breakfast and if it did getting to the car unleashed the beast and I went through the day mortified because it looked like I slept with my finger in the light socket.

This continued into my college years … long, short, medium … it didn’t matter, my hair did just what it wanted. Then to top everything off, during my late teens my heritage from the paternal side of the family kicked in and I began going gray. I will not tell you my initial remedy because of course it was futile. I fought coloring it for years into adulthood … then started experimenting. That is a whole novel by itself and will not be discussed in this telling.

With the gray came what my Mother called Wild Hairs … an extremely stiff, straight white hair sticking up from my scalp in any number of places that refused to be tamed. Or, it might be a tight corkscrew doing the same thing. Again …the method of battling these new beasts will not be discussed.

Time rocks on and hormones again come into play. Now the beast is in various stages of graying … silver here, white there, some black still lurking at the nape of my neck … but horror of horrors, it is now has the look and consistency of a wire pot scrubbing pad on most days. Deep sigh and a final ‘to hell with it’ attitude, I just let the damned stuff do what it wants when I run it through the shower and blow dryer every morning.

The thing my Mother neglected to tell me about ‘Wild Hairs’ is they begin appearing in various other areas as well … chin, cheek, lip, eyebrows … gad it sucks to get old!

Seems my entire life has been spent chasing ‘wild hairs and hares’. Heads up you young whipper snappers … there are definite surprises waiting for you!

Copyright © 2015 Annie – Original Non-fiction
Always…I wish you peace, joy and happiness, but most of all I wish you Love.
As Ever, Annie