the long and the short of it

I have come to the conclusion that curly hair is the abomination of mankind.Now, for those of you who have straight, little or no hair, I realize this is probably falling on deaf ears, but state my case I must.


 Curly locks of golden hue are often something to be admired.  As a young child, thus was I adorned.  Of course, those were the days of Shirley Temple so having this feature was considered a bonus.  A child blessed by the gods with a golden crown.

As the years marched forward, the golden hair color, so shiny and soft, was over-taken by its darker counter-part.  Everything changed; even the level of curliness.  I guess curls are more ornery than hair color because they became more pronounced, more unruly and more independent possibly a metaphor
for life as one ages.  I started to look like the Italian version of little Orphan Annie.

 Yet, like the curls, rebellion was on my agenda.  Rebellion that surfaced during my teen-age years.  I was certainly not going to let these ornery little critters get the best of me!  Consequently, pre-date rituals often involved bending forward with head placed in close proximity to a rickety old ironing
board and ironing those  curls into oblivion.  I had morphed from Shirley Temple into Cher.  Yet, even then, there were drawbacks.  Straight hair comes with its own set of rules.  It couldn’t rain, have the slightest hint of humidity or any air moving faster than the speed of a snail or little Orphan Annie was back again.  But I soon came to realize that the only person at 50+ years who can have hair like Cher’s  and still look good is Cher.  So it was back to the drawing board and not the ironing board.

The next phase involved various hair twists and turns---a cacophony of styles designed to match facial weight gains and losses---Audrey Hepburn pixie haircut, Kate Middleton long haired “do” with barrette at crown, American Indian braids, short, long and everything-in-between bangs and finally, what
I have today, post-menopausal teen-ager with pony tail.  It is like being on a pilgrimage to find the Holy Grail.  My head needs a traffic cop.  Vidal Sasson,where are you when we need you????

 I had resigned myself to being at the mercy of churlish curls but then realized that the longer the hair, the less the curl.  This is the only instance in space and time where, for a woman, weight is a good thing.  And just when the curls and I had made peace with one another, what did I see as I gazed into the mirror?  Was that a grey hair?  Several grey hairs???  Oh, no!! Now that the curl girl had been sent to greener pastures, her kissin’ cousin, color------GREY color had reared its ugly head.  You just can’t seem to win.