My comb over

I thought I should explain about my "comb over" remark in the previous post.

Yes, I'm losing my hair, and yes the stylist had a hard time hiding the bald spots. But the thing is she did hide them.

I've never had the "knack" of fixing my hair. I wasn't good with my children's hair either. Nor am I good with my grandchildren's hair, even though all the girls like to have me comb it for them, or did when they were small and didn't know diddly about a nice hair style.

Well, it all started when I was working in Philadelphia in 1965 and my boss really wanted me to go to her hair dresser. That meant I would have to stay in Philly later than normal, get a bus way after dark, and not get home until after 10 p.m. because this man could only style my hair at night.

Now, I have naturally curly hair and back then it was so curly even ironing it didn't make it straight. Large rollers helped. Curl Free was used as often as recommended on the box, but still I had extremely curly hair -- which I mentioned to this bozo who insisted on using SMALL curlers on my hair. Then he wondered why when he was combing it out he could barely get a comb through it.

Remember this is my boss's hair dresser.

Well, I was glad I had a scarf and could hide my hair until I got home, where I walked straight into the bathroom and washed my hair -- three times. Each time I poured 1/3 of a bottle of conditioner on it, hoping to relax it some. Then I put my hair up in the biggest rollers I could find, and tried to sleep. Sleeping on rollers was never something I could do. Please note this was only six years before afros came into style. By that time (Afro hair style time) my hair had straighted a bit because when I had children a lot of the curl left my hair -- yeah!

Back to my story: I went to work the next day. He had at least cut my hair some, so it was shorter and my boss thought it looked "nice." Which meant she didn't like it, but couldn't admit it because it was, after all, her most wonderful hair stylist.

So, after that I determined NEVER to go to a hair dresser ever again. And I didn't. I cut my own hair, styled it, sort of, and didn't think another thing of it. Until...

One day at church one of the ladies who is a hair dresser/stylist (what do we call these people these days? Shear geniuses?) said she would do my hair for nothing. I told her frankly what had happened to me and she said it wouldn't happen with her in control of my hair, and she was right. She gave me a perfect cut/style and I've been going to her ever since. We are about the same age, so it's just a matter of time until she retires and then I will have to do my own comb overs.

Heck, by then I KNOW I'll be totally bald so it won't matter. I'll be wearing a wig.

For those of you who didn't know me when I was under 30, I had very thick hair, very dark, and very curly. It really was unmanageable, although in this day and age it would have been right in style -- wild, frizzy, curly -- today anything goes. I was just born too soon.

TTFN