Somewhere in the front of my mind, I like to think that my natural hair is similar to this:
While it is true that I have been blessed with head-decoration of an enviable color and occasional disney-princess-esque flowy-ness, it’s not all peaches and gravy.
In reality—or so my subconscious and the mirror persistently remind me—it resembles this:
..only yellower.
My relationship with my hair is therefore somewhat complicated. I’ve been compelled to grow it long since time immemorial, both by outward influence and my own instincts, and what with the miracle of modern technology and whatnot this would be fine and dandy…
… but for three small things:
My hair 1) scornfully rejects clips, pins, combs, clasps, and ties, and
2) eats gel and spray and glue and mousse, no matter the strength, with the uncaring power of a black hole, and actually soaks up strength from the stuff rather than turn gross and brittle, [possibly going as far as devouring car keys and pens and small animals while I'm not looking, even] and
3) laughs in the face of curling and straightening tools.
For once in my life I am not even exaggerating, guys. I have witnesses aplenty. Many have marveled in consternation at all the things my hair simply will not do [i.e. everything].
In fact, lately it has gotten so bad that if I use no product on it at all it turns into this horrible clingy stiff entity that is not so much a physical accessory as a creature in its own right. It is undead keratin, and it bleeds oil. One of these days I fully expect it to crawl down from my scalp in the night and strangle me in my sleep.
Yeah.
Also, I am too lazy to baby it with fancy shampoo or special oils or whatever, which has caused it to resent me and make nonverbal comments about my inadequate grooming habits.
Until about a week ago, my morning hair-routine deal consisted of standing with my head upside-down and hairspraying the hell out of it until it stuck up like something out of an 80′s music video, which style would last until mid-afternoon before falling limp and sad upon my shoulders once more.
[On a mostly unrelated note, I once read this short story by Joan Aiken about a girl with a minature clan of picts living in her hair. Their seers warned her that danger was coming, but no one believed her, and she got hit by a car and had her hair cut off in the hospital and all the little people had to find somewhere else to live....it was weird. Can't recall what it was called. It was one of those random anthology finds that magically disappeared from the library when it surfaced on the computer log that only one person [myself] ever checked it out.]
So, for obvious reasons, every once in a while I get sick of losing this never-ending battle and I go at it treacherously with a scissors. These snipping-sessions occur in strict steps:
Step 1: deliberate with self for a long time, changing mind countless times
Step 2: complain to every available person about my indecisiveness
Step 3: find a cheap salon with a non-embarrassing name
Step 4: research styles and read tutorials and stuff
Step 5: change my mind and decide not to do it
Step 6: sneak into the bathroom [always on a day it ends up looking untowardly fantastic and perfect] and cut it all off before I even know what I’m doing with my hands.
Sometimes this is a disaster and I end up slinking embarrassedly into the barber shop anyway.
Then again, sometimes it isn’t. When my sister is involved, things usually go pretty well, barring that one time when I ended up with what looked like a fox tail emerging from beneath a mullet.
This is what happened last week, then:
HAVE AT THEE, YE FIEND
I watched a few videos of random people cutting their bangs and bought a comb and went to work with my crappy yellow craft scissors.
The reaction from the outside world has ranged from Miho and Peggy giving me names of people who should fix the choppy bits [it's all choppy bits] and Greta drifting up in the middle of disco night and declaring rapturously that it is ‘beautiful, beautiful’ before drifting away again.
My thoughts: it’s better when it’s clean. And it is very nice not to have to unknot rats’ nests every morning. And I don’t miss my silly little ponytail at all. And, as evidenced by the previous post, it headbangs like you would not even believe.
Conclusion: hair is dumb. Why does anyone even care about it AT ALL— It is DEAD FINGERNAIL MATERIAL GROWING OUT OF YOUR SKULL…
sigh.
