Hair, Continued

A young impressionable  girl, and desperate to have flat hair, I convinced myself that what I really wanted was a flatiron to torture the stuff into heat-induced submission (although I didn't see it that way at the time). Proudly I went to the drugstore and picked out the cheapest one I could find that still looked like it might work. Excitedly pressing my hair through it for a good twenty minutes, I emerged from the bathroom sporting a semi-straight head of hair.

"Well, my dad said matter-of-factly, "It is pretty flat. But isn't that bad for your hair?"

I didn't care. I took showers in the evenings so it would dry and I could straighten it for the next day of school. It was great.

...Until I gradually started to realize that my miraculous hot stick was not a permanent solution. In the battle, this was merely an armistice, a brief period of peace between me and my hair. The more I slid that scorching stick through my overly lively locks, forcing them to life lat, the more I noticed problems with my newfound "solution". My bangs, once soft and wavy (the waves drove me nuts) were frizzy and dry after being burned by the stick. Looking in the mirror one day, contemplating my hair after a bout of vigorous disciplining, I suddenly realized that my hair was flat. I mean, I knew it was flat but it was flat. Limp. Straight. Droopy. Lifeless. Kind of staticky. Boring.

Boring?

Boring is one thing I've never wished to be. But it was true. Once straight, there was little I ould do with my hair except let it lie, straight, boring, or put it into a ponytail. A straight, perfect, boring little ponytail.

It took a little time, a little acceptance, a little burn-stick-weaning, but I learned to just leave the fibrous protein sprouting from my head alone. It still poofs, still frizzes and dries with weird creases and energetic waves protruding from the mass on my head. I learned how to control it while refraining from furiously pinning it to the back of my head. I learned to live with it, to love it sometimes. Really, I figure, who am I to restrain the vibrant life sitting on top of my head?  To force it to be boring? What a cruel way to rule a head of hair.

Just yesterday I discovered the dusty flatiron hiding in a corner of my room. I threw the damn thing away.