Damn straight it was a good [hair] day

While I bemoan, decry and self-loathe many of my physical attributes, I must thank my gene pool for a thick head of hair.  It is curly and robust, was once blonde thanks to Swedish ancestry and 10 summers of competitive swimming, but quickly went brown in my later teenage years.  I used to play around with color but have been natural for a decade now.  Yes, it is starting to grey, very slowly though.  I had a friend during these teen years whose mom was a professional hair stylist, so I was somewhat adventurous with my hair cuts.  No, never a Mohawk, but never a rat’s tail either (popular among boys and some girls for way too long in the Midwest during the Eighties).  I shaved it and went punk for a while, grew it out and put on penny loafers, a cardigan and brow line glasses for a mod look, and tried desperately for several years to grow it long.  But this was its one drawback, the longer it got, the more uncontrollable the curls became (I am looking for this picture, no luck yet).  I made it to my neck once, and not as a mullet, it was the same length all around.  But when it thoroughly dried it was no longer at my neck as the curls swung into action, puffed itself out, and I ended up looking like Carrot Top (pre-steroid era – that’s an odd statement) or a much cooler comparison would be Slash (but sadly the Top is most accurate).  In the humidity of Midwestern summers, even with short hair, I have my own kind of afro.  So, my haircut has basically been the same for the last fifteen years (minus a couple of bright blonde dye jobs in my mid-twenties that I do miss some days). 

As such, I do try to take good care of my hair as well as manage it.  This means product, I have tried many over the years and finally have a nice rotation of tools that work.  But I do not let it work to its fullest extent because I do not blow dry my hair.  I put the product in, sometimes when my hair is fully dry (which is best for me) but mostly when my hair is at varying stages of wet.  And then walk away.   This is a result of habit and perpetually rushing out the door responding to the deadline of the moment.   So I often have kind of wet-look throughout my day, which I do not love per se, but do not mind enough to do something about it (What is said when you do the same thing over and over?).  Not wet like a jheri curl though.   I have the best control of my hair, with a few intractable issues, in the morning.  I have yet to shower, the product is still in there but it has been elevated by sleep into a glorious mess that I quite enjoy and can do some funky things with.  I can twist it, pull it, make it stand on end.  The downside, of course, is that it has a greasy look that can be a turn off and can be a bit smelly from the sweat of the previous day and sometimes from the crappy night of sleep that is far too common.  So I wash away the mess in the morning, I sometimes take a shower without touching the hair, but vary rarely does this occur.  Friends told me I can dry wash my hair with baking soda, but I have never tried it.  But today was a day to let it do its thing, I think I like it mostly because it makes me feel like a musician and the contrarian spirit behind it.  I have freaked out parents, some friends, even some students once in a while with the messy mop on top of my head.  So with all deference to Cube, damn straight it was a good day.