Hair

 

I really didn't give my hair too much thought growing up. Mom cut it, styled it with bobby pinned curls once a week and did whatever she thought looked best, or maybe the best she could do and I just assumed that was it.

Then around fourteen I began to take an interest in it. Enough so that I slept on gigantic brush rollers about the size of orange juice cans to make it bouffant and not frizzy or curly. It was painful. I remember pushing my fingers up between my scalp and the rollers to protect my head when it hurt too much, but it never occurred to me not to do it.

We discovered personal hair dryers about the time I was seventeen and that meant we could sit with some kind of hood, or cap over our head and dry it in less than an hour, which was much quicker than the all night process up to then. Of course about that time I also went to college and my dorm mates would iron my hair straight for me on an ironing board with a tea towel and hot iron!

Somewhere around age 23 I began using just the hose of my hair dryer and a brush to style my long hair into sweeping long locks minus the frizz. And a few years later they came out with actual blow dryers thst changed everything.

The one constant, though, was that I felt I had to do SOMETHING to make my naturally curly hair presentable.

Now, for the first time since I can remember, I simply wash and condition my hair, then fluff my fingers through it and let it go! 

I am in style and it only took seventy years.

Yep, I guess all things do come to those who wait -- long enough.