Riding a Permament Wave

An excerpt from Riding a Permanent Wave, one of the essays in MY LIFE AS A MISFIT.

For my mother, my hair was a real hassle. To take care of the problem, she hired her friend, Carol, to take a pair of scissors and her lack of knowledge to chop it all off. With my dark-rimmed glasses, I looked like Buddy Holly. Only my hair was shorter. Even my mother recognized her mistake, so she let it grow out.         

            In time, my straight mane proved problematic again. This time, she brought home a set of pink foam rollers like it was a new puppy.

            “Aren’t they nice?” she coaxed while lubing my hair with Dippity-do until every inch of it was wound like spools of thread. For full effectiveness, I wore the pink helmet to bed. Otherwise, the curl might not hold. It was a fitful night of sleep as the rollers attempted to lodge themselves in my scalp. Their foam bodies provided little cushion against their hard, plastic skeletons.

            The next morning, my mother unwound the remaining rollers. A few littered the bed like dead bugs. Most of my hair clung tightly to my scalp. The rest drooped in stringy strands. It was a nightmare to make me look presentable. I knew this because she uttered this is a nightmare just beneath her breath as she teased and tamed it. Somewhat content with what she had done, she sent me off to school. I was her Cubist masterpiece: sagging curls, dark-rimmed glasses, and a Catholic jumper. But as soon as the Wisconsin humidity spritzed my scalp, all the hard work she had done disappeared. Those locks were as straight as a ruler’s edge.

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