During this coronavirus isolation, my hair has been
getting more limp and stringy with each passing day. In fact, it’s at the point
where it’s beginning to look as if someone dumped a bowl of brown spaghetti
(okay, make that mostly gray spaghetti) on my head.
I actually have been considering two options:
cutting my hair so short, it won’t be able to droop; or giving myself a home
permanent so my hair will have some “oomph” to it. The latter, however, immediately
brings back nightmarish memories of the home permanents my mom used to give me
when I was a kid. Too vividly I recall the nauseating smell of the “perming”
lotion - a combination of rotten eggs and ammonia - and the way it always ran
down my face and neck. That stuff used to feel like battery acid when it hit my
skin. And forget about getting any of it in my eyes. It’s a wonder I still have
any corneas left.
Still, optimist that I was, back when I was in my
30s I actually did decide to throw caution to the wind and give myself a home
permanent. I figured that perms probably had come a long way since my
childhood. I mean, with all of the modern technology available, I was pretty
sure the newer permanents probably would smell like roses and require only one
or two simple steps. With that in mind, I set out to buy one.
I read just about every permanent box in the
pharmacy before I finally selected one that said, “Simple! Safe!
Self-timing!” It sounded like a
snap, even for someone as clueless as I was.
That night, after my husband went to bed, I decided
to give myself the permanent – mainly because he was totally against the
“do-it-yourself” idea, warning me that I’d probably end up looking like the
Wicked Witch of the West…or even worse, Telly Savalas. Okay, so maybe visions
of Little Orphan Annie did flash through my mind as I unpacked
everything from the box, but I quickly dismissed them. After all, this
permanent was guaranteed to be goof-proof, so I had nothing to worry about, I
told myself.
The first step was something new to me. It said to wash my
hair, then rub this packet of stuff into it so the perm would work better. I followed the instructions, then opened the
packet and squeezed it into my hair. The goop looked and felt like cold yogurt.
“Now wrap
your head in a hot, steamy towel for 15 minutes,” the instructions said.
I panicked. There I stood, with my head covered with
yogurt-looking slop, and I had no idea how to make a towel “steamy.” I grabbed a towel and soaked it in hot
water, but it didn’t steam - it just dripped and ended up weighing a ton.
Desperate, I stuffed it into the microwave.
It came out really hot…and wet. I quickly wrapped it
around my head, and I swore I could hear my brain sizzling. But at that point,
I was more concerned about all the towel lint I’d left behind in the microwave.
How was I going to explain it to my husband when his corn muffins came out
“fuzzy” the next morning?
When the 15 minutes were up, I had to rinse my hair,
then wind it on curling rods. This, I soon learned, should never have been attempted
by anyone who had not been blessed with infinite patience (a.k.a. me). Two
hours later - and that’s no exaggeration - I still was trying to roll my hair
on those puny little plastic rods.
For one thing, my hair was too long. By the time I
wrapped the foot-long clumps around the rods, the teeny elastic bands that were
supposed to hold the rods in place weren’t able to stretch far enough over the
thickness, so they kept snapping off like miniature slingshots and attacking
me. I ended up having to wind two strands of hair at a time, which took about
50 extra perming rods. Even my armpits were starting to ache.
When I finally finished all of the winding, I picked up
a mirror to admire my handiwork. I
gasped when I saw the back of my head. If I had wound my hair using my feet,
the rows of curling rods couldn’t have been more crooked. They zig-zagged worse
than bolts of lightning. How, I wondered, was I supposed to make straight rows
when I couldn’t hold a mirror so I could see the back of my head? I mean, I needed both hands to do the
winding.
Not even thinking, I taped a mirror (using some of
my husband’s trusty duct tape) to the wall, so I could look into it and see the
back of my head in the mirror over the sink. At that moment, as I painstakingly
removed every rod and re-rolled my hair, the least of my worries was whether or
not I’d tear off any paint from the wall when I took down the mirror.
An hour later, I, at long last, was ready to apply
the perming solution. The moment I snipped off the bottle’s plastic tip, however,
I knew I was in trouble. The smell was so strong, so overpowering, it took my
breath away. It was like a combination of sulfur and tear gas. My eyes
immediately began to water. I honestly thought they should patent the stuff for
use in chemical warfare.
“Smear Vaseline across your forehead and stick
cotton to it,” the instructions said, “to prevent the solution from running
into your eyes.”
The only cotton I could find was in an aspirin
bottle, so I decided to substitute toilet paper. Holding my breath, I applied
the solution.
The solution ran down the back of my neck, into my
ears and even into my mouth, leaving a burning trail wherever it went, and
dissolving the toilet paper into a clump of wet pulp. And the smell! If I’d soaked my head in the septic tank, it
couldn’t have smelled much worse.
“Check your curls every five minutes,” the
instructions read. “When your sample strands look like the shape of a letter
‘S,’ your perm is done.”
Every time I checked my strands, they looked like the
letter “I.” I ended up leaving the
solution on for over 45 minutes By
then, my poor scalp felt as if it had been set on fire.
Next came the rinsing, neutralizing solution, more
rinsing, and a special conditioner. I ended up using six towels.
By the time I finally completed every step, it was
nearly 4 a.m. I then read the list of “new permanent” don’ts: “Don’t comb wet hair because it will stretch
the curls; don’t blow-dry the curls or they’ll straighten out; don’t shampoo
the curls for 48 hours; don’t allow anyone to breathe heavily on the
curls.” Shrugging and too exhausted to
care, I went to bed with my hair soaking wet.
The next morning, I woke up looking like Zombie
Woman from the movie “Night of the Living Dead.” My hair had frizz, cowlicks, corkscrews, and perfectly straight
areas (which I’d obviously missed while blinded by the perming solution). And
the colors! My gray was yellowish and
my brown was reddish.
In the kitchen, I found a note from my husband,
who’d already left for work. “Call the gas company,” it said. “The house smells
like rotten propane or something.”
Unfortunately, that rotten propane was coming from my
head…on which I was tempted to wear a paper bag for the next month or so.
So now that I think about it, waiting a little while
longer until I can get a proper dye-job and a perm from a professional might
not be such a bad idea after all. I’m pretty sure my hair and my scalp will
thank me for it.
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Sally Breslin is an award-winning humor columnist and the
author of “There’s a Tick in my Underwear!” “Heed the Predictor” and “The
Common-Sense Approach to Dream Interpretation." Contact her at:
sillysally@att.net.
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