Way Back When Wednesday: Even As A Child, My Hair Drove Me Crazy

My mother had very specific ideas regarding her three daughters' hair when we were young. My older sister, Patti, had a long, single, blue-black ponytail, high up at the back of her head. My younger sister, Susan, startlingly blond amongst all of us dark-hairs, wore a blunt Dutch Boy cut. For some reason, my long, dark brown hair was always woven into two tight braids, one on either side of my head. I hated those braids and the agonizing procedure it took to get them.

St. Patsy was a no-nonsense mother when it came to things like Routine Maintenance. When it was time to braid my hair, I had to stand there with my back to her, motionless, and hold my own Implements Of Torture. As she combed or brushed my hair free of the dreaded Snarls (using either Implement, depending on which I could find), a minimum of fussing on my part would be endured, and no movement. "Stand still! Stop fussing!" she'd say, exasperated. "Hold the brush. Now hand me that rubber band. Now the other one." No amount of pleading and placating would convince her to allow me to wear my hair loose and free, either. Nope. It was braids, braids, braids. "You look so nice in braids, and everyone thinks so. Look how nice they are! You're lucky to have such nice, thick hair for braids," my mother would say every time I asked, and it never once occurred to me to take out my braids as I walked on my way to school.

Washing my hair, which back then was done weekly, was a complicated affair. I was raised in a house that never had a shower the entire time I lived there, twenty-two years. We always took baths and found it easier to wash our hair in the kitchen sink. In order to wash my extremely long hair as a child, my mother would have me lie out on the kitchen counter with my head over the sink; she would then shampoo my scalp and the length of my hair, which was a terrible trial for me. And her.

Not only do I hate water on my face, but I have always had a very sensitive scalp and forehead. Once Mom would start wetting my hair, I would start getting ticklish and jumpy. And then start laughing. And pretty soon, the laughing would become crying and things would get really ridiculous. My mother would try to settle me down, and invariably my father's voice would come floating over it all from another room, mildly concerned (but not enough to put down his reading and come in), and we would both yell, "It's okay!" and something about me getting my hair washed. By the time it was all over and my mane was in a towel turban, I could barely sit up and hop off the counter.

How the hell was it worth it? You'll have to ask St. Patsy; she was the Insister Of The Braids.

I do remember one day in first or second grade, a day when I was allowed to have my hair down at school. I was wearing a beautiful dress--one of my favourites, with a big fluffy skirt and a little Peter Pan collar. At some point during the day, I started feeling a pain in the back of my head. As the day went on, it hurt more and more, and I had to go up to tell my teacher. She asked me to point to where it hurt. She turned me around so that she could look, and when she brushed my hair aside so that she could see more clearly, I heard her gasp. She asked me to go to the nurse's office where she would meet me shortly.

At the nurse's office, she and the nurse gently pushed most of my hair away to reveal the problem. Apparently, as the day had gone on, many strands of my hair underneath had wound themselves around and around the top two buttons on the back of my dress. They had to cut some of my hair to free me.

It was, I guess, a partial vindication of St. Patsy's Ban On Loose Locks.

By the time I got to third grade, I was released from Braids once and for all. And my long, long hair was cut slightly above my shoulders, too. Better days for us both.

How about you? Any hair-raising tales? Please tell me I'm not the only one (and not the only one who wore braids).

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