Nobody Wins: Watch Your Hair Grow

Nobody Wins: Last week, while I was at the library, a young man, younger than my son, tried to pick me up. Actually, I didn’t realize that’s what he was doing, because you see, I’m pretty naïve when it comes to that stuff. This kid said he was twenty-two. He even had a degree in business. And yet---there he was, asking me out to lunch.

A woman in her fifties…go figure.

Now…I’ve been thinking about this, short of the fact that he could have been mentally handicapped, or had just watched Pamela Anderson does Dallas…I’ve decided it’s because of my hair. (You can stop laughing now.)

You KNOW I’m right…cut it out.

Whenever I think about my hair, I think about my mother, because all of my life, my mother hated my hairstyles. She liked it one way, long and straight, with no bangs.

See the picture of me holding the flowers? That was taken when I was nineteen. I was going to my first job as a professional drummer. My mother had even bought the dress I was wearing…shorts underneath a long dress. My parents had bought me flowers for luck on my first night. My mother kept repeating, “Oh, you look so pretty!’

But was I appreciative? Look at my face.

I was thinking, “Do you HAVE to take my picture?” I felt like I looked absurd. This was right when the rock and roll scene was coming into fashion, and I hated my forehead. But I loved my mom and my dad…I knew they meant well. I just was the typical, “So you want me to get married to a rich man and get out of your house?”

THINK AGAIN!

Sometime after this picture was taken, I went to get a haircut. I told the lady hairdresser, “Hey, cut it to the middle of my back.” But did she listen?

No. She took a hold of it, twisted it quickly, and chopped it off at the neck. Then she carried her prize into some room in the back, where I’m sure she got a fine bit of extra change for it.

That's when I learned that you can not trust hairdressers. Ever. Especially if you are a girl and have long hair.

Sorry, I happen to hate hair dressers. Nothing personal. To a hairdresser, long hair means lots of time, and time is money, so the easiest thing to do is just cut it off.

They tell you they won’t cut it, then they DO, and then you want to kill them.

But my hair became a sore subject to my mother and I.

Check out the picture of me looking away---I was wondering if the guy in the picture was laughing because....well, look at that outfit! Really! What WAS I thinking?

In the Seventies and Eighties the fashion for everyone was big hair. Not just little hair BIG, tease it up, fluff it out, spray it with a bottle, and then act like its natural---hair.

That’s me and some pitcher from the Cardinals Baseball Team. I think his name was Joe Magraine. Good looking guy. I paid five bucks for that picture, and I wasn’t even a really big fan of his. I was just bored---it was taken at a baseball card convention, and if you’ve ever been to one of those, and think collecting stats on cardboard is pretty stupid, like I do (Unless of course you have Babe Ruth’s first card) …you’d look for entertainment too.

My mother tolerated that look, but when I got into my forties, she just about lost it. (See last remaining picture.)

There I am, standing with the fabulous Mark Twain, (Who by the way endorses my writings and had enough sense not to try to pick me up.) I’m proudly showing my brand new corkscrew perm, given to me by my new husband (who is twelve years younger, but likes curly hair)

My mother hated it---Absolutely despised it. There were many a time I walked away in tears after some of her comments on it.

So now, I’m glad to report, I seem to have come full circle on this hair thing. If my mother were alive today, she would be ecstatic because, I’ve finally let it grow out, after all these years. And go figure again, I did it to please my hairdresser, Kurt.

Kurt suggested I let my hair grow out---it’s so long now, that today I got ketchup in it from my hamburger. I fought Kurt long and hard on letting it grow, (My mother’s was always there in the back of my mind) but then one day, I said…well okay, I don’t leave the house anymore, you win.

Now, I can’t wait to tell him I was solicited by a twenty-two year old guy.

Kurt would get a kick out of being right, and Kurt is NOT gay...which explains that maybe my mother was right all along.

You may ask yourself...why should WE care about your stupid hair Joyanna? I don't know. Actually, hair seems to be pretty important to us all.

Dolly Parton wears wigs, but you can't tell. The style now for women is straight...which is a good thing because perms and haircuts are one of the first things to get cut out of the budget.

Pamela Anderson said on The View today that she does her own hair. (Oh sure.) If I had the money to endow myself when I was nineteen as Pamela Anderson did, I would probably have, like my parents wanted...married a very rich man.

Well....maybe not. Hard to say. (That's a whole other blog)

I could have written about men’s hair, or gray hair, or hair color. In the end, for all the pain and heartache I caused my mom, I have her to thank for it. She had great thick hair, and lots of it right to the end, and it was such a beautiful gray everyone wanted to know what bottle she got it from.

“God’s Gift” by the one and only Almighty…the box would have said. Revlon, eat your heart out.

You watch…someday, when I see mom again in heaven, she will look at me and say, “I’m so glad you let your hair grow! It always looked so pretty that way.”

“I know mom…I love you too. Let’s go watch the game.”

In the meantime, until I join her , I’m going to let my hair grow even longer. This deception seems to be working so well, who knows---by the time I get to my eighties I might hit nineteen!