Poppy Mom

The Summer of the Lone Pigtail

I've got a serious hair problem. Or maybe it's a serious mental health problem. Most likely, it's both.

I love wearing my hair in pigtails. No, I'm not 7; I'm almost 32. Nothing screams "retarded adolesence" like a woman in her 30s, with a chld of her own, sporting Shirley Temple-style pigtails on either side of her head. I'm sure I look like a dork; I do have mirrors in my house, after all.

But I really don't care. My hair's too short in the front for a single ponytail, and I don't like the severe instant-facelift look. My hair's shoulder-length, naturally curly, and so damn thick that I could clean my brush and knit a sweater, if I knew how to knit. And when it's June in St. Louis, and the temps and humidity are on the rise, the hair has got to go.

No, cutting it short isn't an option. That's against my religious beliefs. And no, I'm not Pentecostal. I belong to The Church of Too Damn Lazy to Get My Hair Trimmed Every Month.

This morning, I was rushing to get bathed, toothbrushed, deodoranted, dressed, and pigtailed in the five minutes when Clara "Hair-Don't" Jane was willing to tolerate not being the center of the universe.

I was too slow.

She started fussing right before I began work on the pigtails. Instead of stopping, placating her, and resuming, I hurridly slopped together the 'tails. So what if they're crooked? I'm a 31-year-old with pigtails, for God's sake. Dignity went out the window long, long ago.

We went about our day. Visited some friends, paid a visit to B. at work, did some shopping. About mid-afternoon my too-short bangs were escaping from the 'tails. I pulled the right pigtail free from its elastic and redid it. Then I tried to pull the left one free.

I tried.

And I tried.

And then I started to panic.

You know, no matter how hard one pulls and tugs on an elastic that's got a big frizzy curl wrapped around it, it's not going to budge. It's just going to get tighter and tighter and tighter, until there's one whole lock of hair permanently attached to said elastic.

Maybe this is a good thing, this hair elastic that's currently welded to my head. I mean, I spend a lot of time searching for hair elastics, since I tend to leave them all over the house. Now, as long is it's stuck in my hair, at least I'll always know where I can find one!

Sadly, this isn't the first time my hair has gone all boa constrictor on me. In the summer of '95, I got lucky in that my natural hairstyle - wildly curly and untamable - was en vogue. To celebrate this, I stopped brushing my hair. I washed and conditioned regularly, and let it air-dry, resulting in a head full of flowing, thick, just-out-of-bed rumpled curls.

And then the dreadlock formed.

It started slightly to the left of the crown of my head, where the hair elastic is currently residing indefinitely. Overnight - I swear, it wasn't there when I went to bed - this lock of hair turned on me. The hairs spent the entire night, winding over and over and over until in the morning, I had a solitary dread snaking down my back.

Now, what the hell do you do with one dread? I sported it for several weeks, for lack of any ideas short of shaving it off the back of my head.

You'd think I would learn to not tempt the hair-devils. Here I find myself, nines years older but apparently not any wiser, with yet another unwanted hair-appendage jutting from the back of my head. Last time, it eventually took two hours and an entire bottle of conditioner to remedy the situation. This time, I've got a better idea.

Someone give me some scissors.

Posted by Robin at June 28, 2004 05:06 PM | TrackBack