Hair. . . not the musical.

Hair, hair, hair.Flow it, show it,
Long as God can grow it, my hair

Over my morning cup of Earl Grey, I read this blog this morning.  It had me chuckling.  And thinking about my own bad hair days.  So rather than leave one long, long reply to her post I decided to just put it here.  So, without further ado, I give you my chronological tale of bad hair days:

1962:  My parents always laughed about how little hair I had and what I did have was almost transparent and stood straight up.  I sported a lot of spit in my hair in those days to try to get it to lay flat.  Not mine.  My mom’s. Ewwwww.

Spit-optional hair. Finally.

It took a few years. . . but I did grow some nice hair (ok, maybe not those bangs – but I can’t take the blame for that.)

Vintage 1967. This was nice hair.

1967:  I twirled my shoulder length hair around my finger one too many times causing  my mother to snatch me up and take me to her butcher beautician for the first of many pixie cuts. (The style haunted me for YEARS to come.)  This prompted one of our neighbors to forever call me “Boy”.  But it was the 1960’s and Twiggy made the style at least somewhat popular at the time.  Maybe on a twenty-something in a micro-mini dress, go-go boots and spidery eyelashes (which are back in style again).  On me it was just a boy cut.

Behold: The pixie cut.

Thankfully, I can’t locate a picture of the “shag”.   Think Brady Bunch mom haircut.  It. Was. All sorts of awful.  My grandmother thought it was silly and cut it off with her sewing scissors.  My mom actually suggested that I should have stopped my grandma from doing this but she fell silent when I asked if she would have stopped her.  It eventually it grew out but maybe not in a good way.

The awkward middle school years.

High school and college was a mix of the wedge haircut made popular by Dorothy Hamill and swoopy Farah Fawcett hair.

Vintage 1978 – Why so glum?

And then the 1980’s happened and bad hair was EVERYWHERE.  Seriously.  I’m not sure why I ever thought perms were a good idea.  But it led to what I call my Olivia Newton-John look. Or at least how she looked in Grease. . . only without the hoochie mama black paint-on pants.  Thankfully, one thing I didn’t do was mess with the color of my hair.

I think the dog asked, “Are you my mother?”

It should be noted that In the late 80’s I broke my hand and had trouble styling my hair for a wedding.  My mom suggested that I go the beauty school and let them do it for me. One of the most awful hair experiences of my life. Both the style AND the fact that the mother and child in the chair next to mine were found to have head lice.  (You’re scratching now aren’t you?)  Let me tell you,  head lice cause quite a commotion at the beauty school.  I cried in the car on the way home.  But. . . my boyfriend at the time did the unthinkable and put my hair in hot rollers for me.  And it looked pretty darn good.  But what it showed me was that this awesome guy (who was actually a cop and not a hairdresser) was a keeper.  Next year we will have been married 24 years.

The 1990’s brought marriage and motherhood.  .  . and the return of the pixie  in various forms.  Our nephew recently saw a picture from those days, looked at me and said, “never do that again.”  Lol.  But honestly, I do love the simplicity of short hair.  It was so easy.  Even if it didn’t look great.   Pictures of cute short hair cuts always catch my eye.  I have to tell myself that I’ve waited too long to have enough hair to actually style.

Vintage 2004. The pixie revisited.

And then we bought a motorcycle.  And what a helmet does to short hair is unspeakable.  So I started growing it out again.  It’s the longest I think it’s ever been and t’s kind of fun now that I have more time to actually mess with it.

Vintage 2014: Classic.

There you have it.  My evolution.

And a parting thought:

Truth.