Downright Frizzy

We all have our bad hair days. I’m no exception. However, I remember a time, before diabetes and alopecia attacked my hair that it was so frizzy, it looked like a mop.

For as long as I can remember, my hair was always curly and frizzy. When I was about thirteen years old, my mom tried to tame the frizz by giving me a home permanent. It didn’t work. Actually, it made my hair worse. Therefore, I allowed my hair to grow longer so I could tie it back during the summer months. Most often, in the winter, I hid my hair under a hat.

I tried everything I could think of to tame my hair. In my teens, stores sold huge, they didn’t call them curlers because they were meant to control or possibly eliminate the curls, rollers. Some of these rollers were as wide in radius as a beer can (back then, soda was not yet sold in cans. That would happen in 1967.)

The huge rollers helped for a while providing the day was warm, dry, and sunny. Toss a cool, damp, cloudy day my way, and my hair did what it knew how – curled and frizzed.

Once I married (in my early 20s), out of nothing more than frustration, I cut my hair. I was pregnant and the summer heat was more than bothersome. My hair that once hung just below my shoulders, now sat just under my earlobes, but I went further than that. Not only did I cut it that short, but I also did my best to layer it to avoid a pyramid look. After I initially cut my hair, the bottom stuck out like a sore thumb making the top of my head look pointed while the bottom part of my hair fanned out about three inches from my face. Not good! I, again, picked up the scissors and began cutting.

After about thirty minutes of carefully snipping a section at a time, I was satisfied that I didn’t look like an electrocuted Harpo Marx.

I kept my hair short until my younger son was about three years old, then I started allowing it to grow – and wow, it grew fast.

Within two years, my hair was once again just below my shoulders. Once again, I relied on huge rollers but by this time, home hair dryers were popular.

While the old "bonnet" style was still on the market, the newer ones were called "blow dryers" cince you held it in your hand and "blew" air through your hair.

Naturally, I bought one. Thinking that if I used it correctly, my hair wouldn’t be as curly and frizzy as it normally would be. Nope! Either I didn’t use it the right way or my hair was just too unruly. Back to the rollers.

With experimenting, I found that if I used the rollers first to keep my hair damp but not drippy, then accompanied with a very large round brush, the hair blow-dryer worked better. Except for those cool, cloudy, damp days. Then the mop appeared all over again.

The strangest part about my hair was that, while it was frizzy, it was extremely soft. I know it looked like a wire brush or a wad of Brillo, but it felt more like shredded cotton balls. Weird! My hair was just weird!

At my wits end, I dealt with my hair the best I knew how. More often than not, I either tied it in a loose ponytail at the nape of my neck, or, in the summer, attempted a sloppy French twist to keep it off my neck.

In the fall of 1998, my husband and I moved to Florida. I’d never been here and didn’t know what to expect. My hair was still doing its own thing and I was still trying to keep it as tame as possible.

We made quite a few friends, some of whom suggested I cut my hair short, thinking, the shorter, the better.

After telling them of the nightmares I had when my hair was short, they sympathized and came up with suggestions for hair salons.

My first attempt didn’t turn out so well. I walked in with a hat on and the first words I heard were, “Oh dear! It can’t be that bad!”

Taking off my hat, my hair sprung out like a too tightly coiled spring. The stylest's eyes bulged but trying to reassure me that she could help, she said, “Oh honey. I don’t know who permed your hair, but she ruined it. I’m sure I can do something with it.”

Trying to hold back a laugh, I said, “This isn’t a perm. This is all natural. It’s all me.”

She didn’t know what to say but decided to try her best.

After washing my hair (which I had washed that morning), she dumped a handful of conditioners on it. She worked them in my hair and then rinsed it. She grabbed her super-duper blow dryer and an extremely wide round brush and began working her magic.

Before my hair was fully dried, she pumped some kind of defrizzing oil in her hands, rubbed them together, and then applied it into my hair and scalp. Satisfied that she had the right amount (not too oily, not too dry), she picked up an instrument I’d never seen before. It was a straightening iron. Well, blow me away!! I’d never heard of that before. Maybe there was hope for my hair yet.

As she worked on my hair, I began seeing a smoother, silkier, straighter head of hair instead of the curly mop I’d walked in with.

I was amazed.

The salon had two rows of chairs that faced the walled mirrors. The patrons could see each other’s backs but that’s about it. I don’t think anyone really cared to look at the other clients, as long as we looked good to ourselves.

However, as my “stylist” was almost finished with my hair, I heard a noise from behind me.

I was fifty-three years old. I mention this so you’ll understand what happened next. The woman behind me appeared to be in her mid-seventies. I heard a “harumph!” sound, like she was clearing her throat but also wanted attention. I didn’t say anything so she “harumphed” again but this time, she looked in her mirror at the back of my head, and said in a very loud voice, “I firmly believe that the older a woman gets, the shorter her hair should be!”

For some reason, I assumed she meant me, since we were the only clients in the shop. After all, she was also looking right at my back. She made no attempt to hide the fact that she was looking at me in disgust but speaking to her stylist.

With that, I turned to her, smiled sweetly, and said, “In that case, you should be bald!”

The owner of the salon walked over and said to me, “I’d like you to leave, NOW! We won’t charge you for today but please don’t ever come back.”

I never stepped foot in that salon again, but I did have the satisfaction of putting a self-appointed, opinionated, (I won’t say what I’d really like to call her) person in her place.

After that stylist showing me the products I could use on my hair, my curly frizzy days were finally over.

It only took fifty-three years!