Sincerely from me to you: Mama's Hair

Since you can't give my blog a gift for it's birthday, I thought I'd give a gift to you instead: the gift of laughter.

Enjoy Part One of "The Evolution of Mama's Hair."

"I was born a small black child..." (if you've never seen the movie The Jerk, then you don't get the joke)...actually, I was born without any hair whatsoever, and I stayed that way a very...long...time.

When I was about 3-years-old, I finally got some hair, but not long and luscious enough for any kind of dog ears or pig tails. I think I looked like a boy with surfer hair. Yes, being beautiful was going to be difficult from a very young age. {P.S.--I still have that yellow wicker chair.}

Okay, so this isn't my hair {I'm the one in the middle} but instead one of my grandmother's wigs. I'm also dressed up in a Japanese kimono for reasons I'm unsure of. This has always been one of my favorite pics because it shows one of the rare times that I actually was having fun at my grandmother's house. It was shortly after this picture was taken that she yelled at the 3 of us and said, "Why the hell won't you all go home!" Good times. Good times.


Okay, so this is where it starts to get good. My hair was finally growing around the same time that I had to start wearing these humongous gogs (i.e. glasses) and was only a few years away from needing braces. Lord help me, I was the Queen of awkward. (There's no question where the Cheese gets his vision or his teeth. Poor kid.)


Oh but it only gets better! This was my Sally Jessie stage. Those red frames didn't help things, especially when I had cut my bangs to feather but were actually too short to feather so they just stood straight up in little spikes. You can't tell because my tongue is sticking out {?} but there are braces on those teeth. Nice. And yes, this was our Christmas card that year.


The years "grow" along and fortunately for me, so does my hair. The pic above is actually my senior picture. I had finally achieved long and luscious, but the bangs were still having lots and lots of issues. Note: contacts and no braces. Hallelujah and Amen!


But then half way through my senior year, I decided to cut it all off. Story of my hair's life: let it grow, grow, grow and finally when it's long, CUT IT ALL OFF! Wilson Phillips was big at the time. That's all I can say. I overheard someone my freshman year in college call me Dorothy Hamel. I think she was just jealous.


I don't know what to say about the following pic other than please take my advice and never get a perm when your hair is cut really short, unless of course you are trying to look like an old lady, and then by all means go right ahead. I also had the Brooke Shields brows working for me.


If this look like a school picture, that's because it is {from my teacher years.} At this point, I had figured out that long and luscious wasn't in the cards for me. I was a short haired girl--it worked for me. And by damn, if I couldn't make bangs work, then I just wouldn't have any at all. Actually, I'm grateful for those sweeping long bangs because hiding underneath them is a band-aid where my forehead had come into contact with some pavement. It's a long story...


Stay turned for Part Two of "The Evolution." Unfortunately for me, it only gets worse.