Curly hair

I remind myself of Frieda, the girl with naturally curly hair in the Peanuts comic strip.  But unlike Frieda, who was quite proud of her tassle of  red locks, I spend a goodly amount of time blow drying my hair straight and then using a curling iron to make it curly again. Huh? It really does make sense, you see, my naturally curly hair  has a mind of its own.

In every photo of me from elementary school you will view a cute little girl with something that looks like wings jutting from the sides of her head. High school pictures reveal a cute teenager with teased hair and something that looks like bat ears jutting out through the poof. In college I let my hair grown really, really long in hopes that the weight of long hair would pull down the flight devices. But no. I was a Joan Baez with two curls fighting a death match — sleek hair lost. My one period of victory over the rogue curls was when I permmed my hair into an Afro (I have previously posted about my Righteous with the Sistahs period).

When it became clear to me that I was never going to be Black, I let my perm grow so that  for awhile I had a head of wavy hair close to my scalp and  tightly permmed hair at the ends. I think I have seen that hair style in an episode of Star  Trek. These days I often let my hair “air dry” without benefit of  electrical devices. The result is a tent shaped, gently curling head of hair — I tell myself I look like Cleopatra. Oh, I guess she was long dead before she got to 60 years old. So I guess I look like Cleo’s grammy.

Now, in addition to curls I have added colors, the current one being “caramel”.  At least it was caramel. Now it is grey for the  first two inches and then it is caramel.  I think I will dye the ends red so I look like a soft ice cream.