A Curl of Fate

If there were a soundtrack to my formative years, it would be the hum of a blow dryer.

I don’t know exactly when my obsession started; I just know it was early on. As a preschooler I would walk around the house wearing a pastel striped blanket over my thin, puffy, cloud-like curls. I’d wear it all day. Pulling it into a ponytail, tucking it behind my ears. Pretending that the long, straight cotton mane was my real hair.

My mom, bless her redheaded, curly-haired heart, would tell me over and over again, “But sweetheart, before you were born, I asked God to give you that curly hair.” Of course, in the mind of an eight year old, this was a sign that maybe I could reverse my fate. So at night while normal third graders were deep into the REM stage, I was lying in bed praying with all the fervor I could muster that God, the doer of miracles, would overturn his decision and give me stick-straight hair. Apparently, however, my vanity didn’t strike high on his priority list, what with all the hunger and disease out there. So I did the best I could with my two biggest assets— a round brush and 1200 watts of heat.

I entered high school in the ’80s—the decade of Blondie and Bon Jovi. I made it through okay, considering everyone else’s hair looked as bad as mine. But I did suffer one major set back: The humiliating two-stepping incident.

I grew up in Georgetown, Texas, where the annual rodeo was the highlight of summer. Armed with a helmet made of Final Net, I headed out with my best friend, Lori, to the post-rodeo dance. It was a fancy event. Folding metal chairs sat around the perimeter of the big concrete floor slathered in sawdust (boots do have to scoot, you know). And as an added bonus for those trying to loose water weight, it wasn’t air-conditioned.

My heart did a two-step of its own when the cutest kicker (translation: A pickup-truck-driving, country-music-listening, wannabe cowboy) in all of GHS asked me to dance. He put me in the obligatory headlock and propelled me around the floor. I was in heaven. Just as visions of me as the blissful wife of a rancher sashayed through my head the song came to an end. Then I realized with a nauseating, please-let-the-floor-open-up-and-swallow-me-whole horror, that my hair—in all its Final Net glory—was stuck to his arm. Apparently the combination of hairspray and sweat forms an impenetrable compound, much like super glue.