Day 297

When I was in high school, I insisted on arising at 5:00 a.m. every morning to wash my hair. I also suffered under the delusion that I needed a perm, even though I had naturally curly hair. It was because we all wanted hair just like Farrah Fawcett.

My mother would suggest that hair was healthier if only washed once a week, at which point I would gasp. Then my mother would regale me with this story:

After she and Dad were married, they were to be stationed at the base in Mountain Home. They were only there a short time before Dad was re-stationed and Mom moved back to Shelley, but while on base, the woman in charge of the wives would lecture them about the frivolity and needlessness of washing their hair more than once a week. She had a chart in the shower building and would keep track.

That story was always weirdly unsettling to me, but it wasn’t until the nineties that I finally realized both Mom and the control-freak-barracks-woman were speaking some truth. A whole week still seems extreme to me, but three or four days? Acceptable. Not “Farrah Fawcett” acceptable, but that was never gonna happen anyway. With age comes wisdom, I suppose.

#momscompanytowels

#weirdtips

#withagecomeswisdom

#healthyhair