Lately, the theme of my life has been "Bad Hair Experiences". Truthfully, I have not been completely happy with my hair since the end of last summer. My goal is to like my hair a whole lot more by the end of this one and by my birthday, have exactly the hair that I want.

My friend, Alicia has had two diary entries about bad hair; one recently and one from when she was in high school.

My first really bad experience with my hair during high school also happened much in the same way that Alicia�s. Except that *I* was the one who was enrolled in cosmetology school. But yes, I used to bleach my hair to a Marilyn Monroe-esque platinum blonde. Ahh, those were the days�bleach *and* AquaNet. But I digress.

So, I tell my cosmetology instructor that I want to perm my hair. Thinking that she would know exactly which solution to buy at Sally�s, I went with her recommendation. She said to buy Quantuum in the mauve colored box. And so I did. My best friend at the time, Kayce, helped me put the rollers in and drenched my hair with the solution. We read the directions and followed them to a T. The instruction pamphlet emphasized to leave the perm solution on the hair for exactly 20 minutes. At 19 minutes and 59 seconds, Kayce started to unroll my hair.

We proceeded to follow the remaining directions. And boy was my hair ever curly. I almost looked like a towheaded Shirley Temple! It wasn�t until the next day in class, when my teacher came up to admire my new look that I found out the extent of my damage. She barely ran her fingers through my hair to inspect it when a GIANT clump followed. She did it again. Another large wad of hair came out. And another. Finally, I asked her to stop. My hair was limper than overcooked spaghetti. I was devastated. She then informed me that she�d have to cut out the perm so I could begin rebuilding/re-growing healthy hair. Immediately, the silver blades of her scissors snipped, cropped and basically pruned my hair.

When she was done, I cried. She had cut off over 6" on my hair. (It had previously fallen below my shoulders.) It wasn�t until I had a conversation with the other cosmetology teacher, Mrs. Patterson (who later became my hero! But that�s another diary entry) indicated that Minerva (my teacher wanted to be called by her first name) had told me the wrong perm. The perm I used was for virgin hair; I should have used the one for color-treated/bleached hair. And, Mrs. Patterson also told me that as porous as my hair was, it should have only been left on my head for a maximum of between 7 to 10 minutes!

Needless to say, I have *never* attempted to perm my hair in all the years following�not even professionally!

This is a photo of my hair 4 � months after the disastrous Perm Gone Wild incident:

No wonder I never finished cosmetology!!!
ps--This photo demonstrates what happens to an innocent teenager when her stepmom picks out the specs: her CHEEKS can see better than her EYES!! Until next time...peace, love, & HEALTH!!!