This is Nancy and me in the Lodge at Camp Towaki. I loved that place. Camp Towaki: Place Where Friends Meet.
It’s been a long time since I’ve let my hair grow long. It was long all through college, and then for some reason I went out and had it all chopped off. (That was NOT a mullet – it was a SHAG. That’s right, SHAG. Make of it what you will.) (It’s on my Flickr; judge for yourself.)
It’s not a mullet!!!!
And then, right before I got married, it was decided that the shag had grown into something too shaggy to be endured, and the day of my wedding shower, my Tumorless Sister went at me with a curling iron and put a pageboy on me.
I tend to keep a hairstyle until long past its expiration date – you can ask my kids. We were looking through some old photo albums the other night and as my children grew taller, my hair just stayed the same. When I tried to explain that my hairstyle had been in the height of fashion the year I got married, and there were some doubts about it even then back when kings always had a pageboy to bring them wine on a silver tray, they just laughed. We turned the page and there they were, a little older, and there I was, a lot older and with the same hairstyle. We turned the page again. There it was again. Their childhoods had one big consistency: Mommy’s hair.
A direct quotation from my son: “Mom, I refuse to believe that hairdo was EVER in style.”
Thank you, baby boy. Sigh.
Won’t somebody tell my laughing children that a combination bowl cut/pageboy used to be cool? That it used to look good? Anybody? Somebody?
Oh, all RIGHT then.
About ten years ago, I cut my hair really short and it’s been short ever since. I figured, why pay somebody to cut it when I could manage this one myself? Isn’t that what manicure scissors are for?
Apparently, it was noticeable that knowledgeable hands weren’t wielding the scissors.
Around last Christmas, I decided that it was time for something different, so I started letting my hair grow. Right now, it’s shoulder-length, but it’s SOOOOO straight and fine, and whenever I picked up a curling iron I ended up with that same damn pageboy/bowlcut thing, and then I saw that episode of Scrubs with the really cool old lady, Mrs. Tanner, who decided she was ready to die rather than submit to dialysis, and she was really, really old, albeit cool, and she had my same hair style, the hairstyle I invariably ended up with whenever anybody aimed a curling iron at me. And it looked great on her, in spite of the fact that she was really, really old, and a lot of old people don’t actually look all that good in long hair, but I didn’t want to have Mrs. Tanner’s hair, either.
Well, unless you’re Emmylou Harris, which nobody is except her, and while Emmylou can get by with long hair even at her age, not many old people can. 
That one had to go, too. so I started wearing my hair UP.
I liked it up. I’ve been wearing my hair up for several months now, and I really like it up. I’ve got all kinds of pretty hair clips and things, and I’m really having fun with it.
Well, until yesterday, when I got a good luck at the back of my hair in the mirror of the college restroom, which is extra bright so the young girls can primp accurately.
The top few layers of my hair are still kind of golden blonde, but underneath? Underneath, which didn’t show unless I wore my hair up? There were WHITE STREAKS under there!
Oh HELLZnah. I got in the car and drove home and I haven’t been out of the house since. I’m having lunch tomorrow with my wonderful Cousin C, and my beautiful mother, neither of whom have a gray or white hair on their heads, and I hope it’s dim in the restaurant.
Because I think I’d rather show a few white streaks than look like Mrs. Tanner. Or some of the old women I’ve seen in the mall, with waist-length hair and butterfly clips, who all look strangely pitiful to me.
And I think I’ll stop by K-Mart on the way home and check out Miss Clairol.
Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly