Some people’s lives change in an instant. Mine changed slowly, starting with a pout, a rant, and a tantrum, on what started as just another bad hair day.
Arggggh! I picture myself slamming down the tall, slender tin of foam mousse – shitfuckgodammit I hate my hair – groaning, accidentally knocking over the Aqua Net aerosol hair spray can – Why can’t anything ever go right in my whole life?
Despite near scorching from too many presses of a hot curling iron, one side of my shoulder length, ash blonde hair stubbornly insisted on flipping under instead of feathering back.
It’s not like it was a special day. It wasn’t a date or a dance or the day we took our school photos. Not that I had a lot of dates in high school. And I hadn’t been to one dance in the three years we’d lived in Raleigh. But that didn’t matter. That wasn’t the point. It didn’t have to be a special day for me to need manageable hair that I could whip into my style of choice, which on this particular day happened to be a classic Princess Diana feathery do.
A study conducted by researchers at Yale University found that bad hair days can increase self doubt, heighten social insecurities, and cause both men and women to be more self-critical in general. So I wasn’t being unreasonable when I considered climbing back into bed, curling up in a ball, and calling it a day – all because of an errant flip.
A missed day of school? Now that was unreasonable. An absence would mean making up my calculus test after school on a later date. An absence would mean I’d have to learn torque from the physics textbook, and not from watching Mr. Prim spin around on his swiveling desk chair. Even worse: An absence would tarnish my perfect attendance record. And that just wasn’t acceptable. So, I took a deep breath and tried one more time to position, lift, and scrunch my hair into submission.
My hands were deep in my mane when my fingers suddenly brushed against a smooth patch of skin on my scalp where hair should be. That’s weird. I picked up a hand mirror and used it to view the back of my head in the vanity. As I fingered my hair with one hand and angled the hand mirror with the other, up and down, left and right, I saw it – a small, round bald spot the size of a quarter. What the hell?
© 2009 Christy Bailey
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2 comments:
It's funny the things we took for granted...that suddenly become a desire to complain about. I used to hate putting a bra around my waist, hook it and twist it back around. Now I can barely remember how to do it. I've been putting a bra on and off my own special way since 2001 and it all seems like a fading memory.
I liked this trip down memory lane that you painted. Very nice!
so true. i miss the life i complained so much about so long ago and want it back but the clock only runs one direction. the moral is SAVOR THE MOMENT.
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