Week 4

Well blog world, I think we have to prepare for a much longer wait than anticipated. Just a new adjustment in the world of IA. I hope to do some travelling this summer to take my mind off of this.

Here we have a picture from me at my pre-K graduation. I was four years old because my mom fudged my birth certificate to get me in school a year early. When I told her that parents keep their kids out for a year, she was shocked. In my house it was all about being competitive and doing it faster than everyone else. For my parents, doing anything that put me behind someone else was unthinkable.

The HAIR!!!! I remember this day because it was a big deal in our house. My grandma did not like the dress my mom bought for graduation, so she took me to a dress maker and had a dress made. My pre-K was across the street from grandparent's so I spent the night with them. My mom had sent me over to her house with my hair in ponytails and ribbons to match the dress. I was supposed to sleep with my scarf and wake up and go to the graduation with grandma and family and my parents would meet us there. That night, my grandma decided that she would put me under the hair dryer and let me wear my hair down, which I had never been allowed to do. It was a disaster.

My parents are long hair ppl. They both believed that a girl and woman should try to do her best to have hair that was at least to her shoulders. They didn't know a lot about hair follicles and the sort, but they were more hair observant than anyone you've ever met. They had looked around and knew what a person needed to do to a kid to make sure as a grown up she had hair. So we had rules in our house about hair. First, hair is almost never cut and only trimmed occasionally. Second, kiddie relaxers were invented by the devil and only serve to ruin a child's hair. When I would beg for one, my mom would say look around, so and so had a kiddie perm and now she ain't got no hair or her hair line is receeding. You want to be bald headed when you get older? If I pointed to someone who I knew who had managed to survive a kiddie perm, they would both just say, she's lucky, you don't get to take the chance. They would only agree to allowing a relaxer after I was thirteen becuase then my body and hair should be able to hanlde it by then. They believed, and so do I, that estrogen in a girl's body changes everything, including her hair, and you should wait until that adjusment before introducing something as permanent as a chemical. Third, heat to the hair of any kind was only permitted on special occasions, and only when you're over eight years old. Fourth, all those hair thingies and small braids in kids' hair are ghetto and cause extra weight on the hair. Extra weight causes damage to the follicle, damage to the follicle causes hair loss, and hair loss is of course evil. Finally, hair additions are not allowed. See fourth rule about weight on hair and then add plastic to the equation. Hair was not meant to be surrounded in anything but the things that grew naturally around it. Hair extensions can led to hair thinnign and hair thinning can lead to .....well, you see where I'm going with this.

Back to the pic...My grandma could care less about hair. She hated doing her hair and hated that she had two girls and had to do their hair. She did her best to teach her girls that hair was not impt and should be cut short so you don't have to bother with it. My aunt feels the same way. My mom thought my grandma was out of her mind. My grandma would try to cut her hair off and she would lock herself in the bathroom until my grandfather came home from work and told my grandma to let her keep her hair if she wants to. By the way, my mom is the oldest, so you just can't say what you can and can not get your kids to think of as unimportant.

Grandma knew my mom and dad were "hair people", it was one of thier favorite subjects and what attracted them to each other. As my mom's friends tell me, my mom and dad had the best fros in school and they knew it. So grandma knew she couldn't press out my hair for her big day, but she thought she could get around it by putting me under the hood dryer. That way my parents couldn't say that she put direct heat on my hair. Grandma did not count on the fact that I have the frizziest hair in the world and you have to straighten it "for real" or not at all. So it turned into a puff ball and that's how I went to graduation. My grandma not really caring much about hair thought it was fine. My parents showed up and hit the roof!!!! They couldn't believe that the whole family was there and they had their perfect fros and their baby was walking around with a lopsided puff ball on top of her head. I remember my grandma sayign, she's cute what's wrong, she's cute.

My dad never forgave her for it. He says that my grandmother never had hair and doesn't know anythign about hair. He blames her for ruining my hair and says that her putting me under the dryer at too young of an age ruined it for the rest of my life. When I would ask him for money to go get my hair relaxed, he would say you wouldn't need to do that if it wasn't for your grandma. Me and ma had a plan for your hair and she messed it up. We don't put relaxer in our hair, my mom doesn't relax her hair, if it weren't for your grandma you wouldn't need to either. I would just roll my eyes and tell him that heat is not good, but one time didn't change my hair for the rest of my life. But of course, my dad doesn't take hair advice from ppl that don't have hair, so he never listened to me.

So that's my puff ball story...chat at you all next week...