A Hair Parable

At some point in my long day today, I had a conversation about the return of fashion ideas from my high school years. Honestly, I don’t really know why anyone thinks the early 90’s are a worthy inspiration for attire… but it seems there are hints of it showing up in some appearances. I suppose these things happen… and I’ll avoid it. I just hope we don’t have a return to spiral perms.

I had a bad experience with perms. Well, not bad. Actually, my hairdresser is a good hairdresser. I just started going back to her after a twenty year hiatus. So I don’t blame her. I blame myself for jumping on the bandwagon and deciding to fry my hair.

At the time, well, like I said, it didn’t actually look very bad. And the best part was my hair was curly all the time. So that eliminated the long process of curling my hair with rags… which was just time away from sleeping when I was a teenager. So… obviously… I had my priorities. And I liked it enough to go back and get a second to last me through the end of high school.

I remember growing that hair out the following summer into my first semester of college. My hair was straw. Burned and so badly damaged, I had no other option than to cut it off. Man… that was a release… and I’ve never looked back, relishing the healthy sheen of my straight sleek hair.

Obviously, I still curl my hair. I returned many times over the years to that long process of tying my hair up in rags. It takes more time, sure, but the curls are softer, more voluminous, and yield many, many, many words of praise. And I’m not damaging my hair in the process. 

Of course, the spiral perm went the way of all outdated fashion. An easy thing to snivel one’s nose at, like the scrunchy or MC Hammer pants. But like all things in the past, the distance of years passes and we forget why we stopped liking things. We remember we had happy moments when some of these details occurred… wearing a flower print dress to a joyous, fun wedding. So, hey, why not wear flower printed dresses again to prompt the blissful nostalgia of days gone by? But… I don’t really think nostalgia makes things that were ugly pretty. Nor does it really justify going back to a habit that looks good on the surface, but is really a destructive process.

Yeah, the spiral perm was two decades ago. I’m sure the chemistry of hair care has improved. But, I don’t know… I still don’t think it will look as pretty to me now, even with the dull gloss of twenty some years to make it seem like it was a good idea and all my regret was the true foolish decision.

No matter how we change the way we look at things, bad decisions of the past are still bad decisions. We can’t undo them by making them again. The trick, folks, is to ne’er do it again.