Hair

I usually save YouTube musical links for the end of my posts but this one sets the stage so perfectly, I suggest you click the link below before reading further.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri1XicuLdxc&feature=more_related

Summer is a great time for me, hair-wise.  Cincinnati’s heat and humidity let my hair do exactly as it pleases which means a combination of curl, kink and frizz. At this stage of my life, I am at peace with my hair and I love not having to spend time blow-drying, hot-rollering or styling it.  No matter what happens, my hair springs back into action, even after I take off a sweaty bike helmet although you wouldn’t want to get too close.

I didn't always appreciate my hair.  When I was in grade school, I wanted straight hair like my friends in the neighborhood so I could put it up in pin curlers.  My mom insisted that girls with naturally curly hair did not need curlers. Well, maybe not in the summer but, in the winter when cold, dry weather made my hair less curly, it did all sorts of funky things.  Mom’s solution was to comb it with hot water so it did all sorts of wet, funky things. Finally, she agreed to curl my hair using socks; none of the models in “Seventeen” ever rolled their hair in socks, however, and for good reasons.

I wasn’t the only one in our family with hair issues.  Like most boys in the 50’s, my brother had a butch cut which left him with about ¼ of an inch of hair all over his head except at his forehead where the ¾ inch of hair stood at attention with the help of “Butch Wax.”  After awhile, Mom got tired of paying Marshall the barber $5 for this kind of a haircut. I mean, what could be so hard about practically shaving a kid’s head every six weeks?  Mom found out when she ordered a hair trimmer she saw demonstrated on T.V.  Mark’s first (and last) home haircut left him with an assortment of bald patches, tufts and nicks, all of which Marshall corrected (mostly) for $10 since this emergency operation had to be performed on a Saturday.  Mom would have been better off ordering a Veg-O-Matic.

My sister’s hair problems stemmed from the fact that she wanted hair like Sleeping Beauty’s but, in fact, she had hair like Little Orphan Annie’s.  Kay’s hair was thicker and curlier than mine so Mom decided to keep it short.  Kay would come home from the beauty shop, take one look in the mirror and fly into a rage, violently shaking her head back and forth until her hair stood out like that photo of Albert Einstein with his finger in an electrical socket. When my dad came home in the middle of one of these storms, my brother tried to prepare him.  “Look out,” Mark warned him.  “She’s been to the bushwhacker.”

When I got to high school, I graduated from socks to rollers and picked up an ally in the Hair Wars, Scotch Tape, to straighten my bangs and the goofy-looking lock of hair I wore in front of each ear. Unfortunately, I couldn’t always get the adhesive off my face in the morning so my blusher left pink rectangles on my cheeks.

In college, I tried almost everything to achieve the sleek, straight, Cher look although visions of a blistered scalp did make me stop short of ironing my hair.  Even with clips, plastic rollers, sponge rollers, toilet paper rolls, orange juice cans, Dippity Do and hair straightener, my hair only met my expectations about three weeks each fall, when the air pressure, temperature and humidity were at optimal levels. I can’t remember when or why I finally decided to let my hair make its own decisions but life has certainly been easier since then. 

When the boys were young, I didn’t expect to deal with hair issues.  Both David and John followed the family tradition, growing from bald babies into curly-haired toddlers.  David’s first haircut looked like something had been chewing on his head; but, after that, hair styles weren’t an issue with our boys – at least not until their grade school friends turned up with buzz cuts –butches without the butch wax.  Even though their barber, Roger, warned them they’d look like a pair of dirty tennis balls, the boys got buzzed and I felt like I was harboring two prison escapees.

I had forgotten that hair is a means of expression for both sexes in the teenage years.  I must have repressed my parents’ battles with my brother as he transitioned from an early Beatles style to something resembling a squirrel’s nest.  Looking back at pictures of family and friends, I see guys with thick hair who went pouffy and guys like Paul, with thin hair, who went long on the top, back and sides.  Despite my dad’s dire predictions, none of them, however, became deviants, social outcasts or Communists.  

Naturally, after grade school, David and John began experimenting with their hair and Paul and I started biting our tongues, with varying degrees of success.  They seemed to be engaged in a tonsorial Tag-Team match.  When David had a traditional cut, John cultivated a long, over-one-eye look ala Greta Garbo.  By the time John’s eye came back into view, David’s hair was a wavy, shoulder length, with a couple of little braids woven in.  After college, David looked for a barber before looking for a job while John had trouble looking for anything with his mop of eyelash-tickling curly hair. 


At David’s wedding reception, one of the guests, who remembered David’s long hair days, went up to John and offered his congratulations.  “My brother is the groom,” John said, pointing toward the bar.  “He’s right over there.”  A few minutes later when John was at the bar, the same guy came up and congratulated him again. John just returned his handshake and said, “Thanks.”

Currently my hair is happy, Paul’s hair is a little thin, David’s hair is businesslike during the week and more relaxed on the weekends and John’s hair is transitioning out of a year-long Biblical phase.   The jury is still out on Willem’s so-called hair which did indeed stand up in feathery little spikes when he was in the pool last week.  The future of his hair can only be left to the imagination.