15 October 2019

The problem with having your hair cut is that you have to sit in a chair and look at yourself in the mirror while it's being done.  I never look at myself.  I never like what I see.  There is a big mirror in the bathroom and I never look in it.  Not for any reason except it never occurs to me.  I only look in the mirror if I'm brushing my hair, but otherwise not.

I finally had my hair cut yesterday.  I'd been putting it off and putting it off and putting it off for weeks.  But it had reached the point of no return and I couldn't put it off any longer.

I have naturally curly hair.  Well, it's not curly any more, but it's naturally wavy.  However it's cut, it does its own thing and I've never learned about "hair styles" so when someone asks me "how do you want it cut?" I never know what to say.

Some time ago, when I was having my hair cut short, the hairdresser said it was a pixie cut.  That sounded good because that particular cut was one of the better ones and so now whenever they ask me what I want I tell them that I want a pixie cut.

The Supercuts hairdresser today took it a little shorter than I expected, but once the hair dried and I could brush it the way I wanted, I was OK with it.

When I was a little kid, I had Shirley Temple curls.  A head full of those curls that my mother never had to set.  She just took a hunk of hair and brushed it around her finger and it stayed curled.

In fact, as the day went on, the curls got tighter and tighter so that by morning, when she had to brush it out in order to make the curls again, it hurt terribly and we had lots of crying every morning.  Finally when I was about 7 or 8, she agreed to have my curls cut off.  We were on vacation in Sonoma and she took me to a hairdresser, but couldn't bear to watch them cut my hair, so she left me there and came back when it was all done.  I was so pleased  to finally have those curls gone.

With no natural curls, my hair went straight so my mother set my hair after it was washed.  In fact, she set and brushed my hair until I graduated from high school.  I never thought that was weird.  In fact, my plan for after high school was to enter the convent.  I had my plane ticket and my trunk packed and the thing I was worried about most was whether or not I could do my own hair for the first six months, before I had a veil to wear.  That might have been a hint that maybe I wasn't really serious  about going into a religious community!  And I wasn't, and didn't.

But after that I did start learning how to do my hair, so I could go off to college.  My hair was never actually straight.  It always had some wave or curl to it (my father had curly-ish hair).  My mother wanted curly hair more than anything (a few of her sisters had curly hair) and at least once every time I went to visit her, she would look at me and tell me how disgusting it was to look at my hair.  She meant it to be a compliment because she meant that she so much wanted hair that looked like mine, but I eventually exploded and told her how terrible it was to have my mother tell me my appearance disgusted her all the time.  She stopped doing it.

I usually kept my hair short, but in the 70s, when the kids were in preschool, I decided to let it grow.  I had visions of having long, luxurious hair and I let it grow for 3 years.  It was long, all right, but skipped the "luxurious" part.  It was so thick and bushy that it looked terrible and I finally had it all cut off.  The interesting thing was  that after it was short again the curl came back.  The hairdresser told me that frequently happens with people who once had curly hair.  Something about the weight of the long hair making the original curls spring back when it is cut.

I've never dyed my hair.  I figure I earned all these grey hairs and I kind of like the salt and pepper.  I did once decide that I  wanted to have auburn hair, like Maureen O'Hara and colored it.  Fortunately not a permanent dye.  Instead of the auburn I expected it was more a hint of metallic purple.  After it washed out, I never tried coloring it again.

I still don't know anything about hair and at this age it's unlikely that I will ever learn.  But my hair usually seems to know what it's doing...and since I never look in the mirror, I rarely know whether I like it or not.
 

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