In Quest of Ordinary

October 2012; better living through chemistry 

When you're a kid, all you want to do is fit in, be unremarkable, ordinary.

I look Caucasian and identify as Caucasian, although there's a tiny touch of Africa in my dad's heredity.  It manifests in me in great skin that at almost 60 years old still has few wrinkles, and I can  get a gorgeous bronze-gold tan with minimal effort.  I joke that I can look at a lightbulb and get tan.  The price of that skin is hair that has an (*ahem*) "ethnic" texture.  Hair that earned me my unfortunate elementary school nickname "Brillo." Every day of my young life was a bad hair day with my kind of hair.

Junior high school was an endless struggle of chemicals and rollers, never letting my hair get wet so it wouldn't frizz, never jumping in the swimming pool or going to the beach or walking in the rain, all in the quest to look like everyone else.  Ordinary, unremarkable, because that is the age when, more than anything else, kids wish to fit in.  Straight, shiny, swingy hair that moves was it, in the 1960s.  And the rituals continued through high school, college, and my 20s, periodic trips to the salon for chemical straightening and several hours of combing and roller setting and sitting under a dryer every time I washed my hair.  My fantasy was to have straight hair and that needed nothing more than to let it air dry any time I washed it and it would stay straight, you know, like every one of my friends could do; instead of the incredible effort it took me to achieve an imperfect approximation of that same look.

Fast forward to 2009 ... and there is a process that would do exactly what I had fantasized.  Expensive, but for $700 every 3 or 4 months, I could have the hair of my dreams, silky, shiny, straight, and no maintenance except wash and wear.  I think it truly would have changed my life had it been available when I was in junior high, I might have had the self-confidence to become one of the popular kids.  Heck, it changed my life when I did it as an adult. I loved it, I had to do it if for no other reason than vindication of all the grief my younger self had put up with.  When it was done, it was just like you would expect me to look, blue eyes and pale blond hair.  I grew my hair halfway down my back and let it shine and flipped it over my shoulder and never had a bad hair day.

But then I realized.  I was still spending huge amounts (of money, now, instead of time, because I'm a grownup and can do what I want) to look ... ordinary.  Just as I felt compelled to do in junior high school. See me on the street and you wouldn't think anything of it - ordinary middle-aged woman who's got a decent hair cut but not doing anything special with her hair.  Here's the giant irony: now that it was in my grasp to have unremarkable hair, as an adult, "ordinary" wasn't really what I wanted any more.  If I was going to spend that much money and effort, I wanted to look outstanding, amazing.  Or, conversely, if I was going to end up looking ordinary anyway, I might as well do it for free.

So I'm letting my straight, shiny hair grow back out, and I'll cut it short and curly for our next cruise.  I'll go wash-and-wear, and just be my unfiltered self.  (and save both money and water, too!)

Before we left Michigan, our stylist taught Dan how to cut my hair the way she did, so we could maintain ourselves when we went cruising.  This is my "natural" hair, circa 2006.