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My First Perm

About twenty years ago I was a young mom in a neighborhood of young moms and one of my friends, Nancy, had beautiful long shiny thick dark brown hair. I had long brown hair too, but mine was rather ordinary.

One day I arrived at her door with my kids in tow for a play date and Nancy's hair looked more gorgeous than usual. She told me that she had gotten a "Spiral Perm" from "Lori" at the neighborhood salon.

I had never in my life had a perm, or color or any sort of treatment on my hair. I had virgin hair. But I wanted it to look like Nancy's so I made the appointment with Lori.

Cue music of doom.

The first thing I learned was that even though the salon rate for a perm was $45 - for me (because of the length) - I would pay not double... but TRIPLE the stated price. That was a lot of money but I wanted that luxurious curly sexy hair....

So I agreed and Lori began to set my hair in those plastic perm rollers. It took a LOT of rollers. She was borrowing them from other stylists. When she finished rolling everything, my head was gigantic and the rollers were heavy. She squirted on more of the smelly solution and put a plastic cap over the whole thing, but it wouldn't fit over all of the rollers. I'll pause while you try to imagine this. Some of them stuck out around the edges of the cap.

Then she put me underneath a lamp or a heater or something (can't exactly remember) and I waited...expecting a miracle.

After some time, she came over to "check on me" and when she went to unroll one of the curlers, it came off in her hand. WITH THE HAIR still in it....This happened to be right in the front of my forehead a little off-center.

I'm thinking "this probably isn't supposed to happen."

She removed the cap and squirted on something called "neutralizer" while calling on her fellow stylists to assist...very casually, as if perhaps she is overbooked and just trying to finish more quickly. They turn me away from the mirror and there are about four stylists, squirting and unrolling the curlers telling me to "close my eyes" because the solution might sting. Someone asked my to hold a towel over my face.... Very sneaky...

But this did not prevent me from seeing several of the rollers full of hair - broken off at the roots - in the basket with the rest.

So, Lori is still trying to behave as if nothing is wrong and I am still expecting to see these gorgeous long spiral curls.

She fluffs and dries and puffs and styles and you know, my hair was thick enough that the missing hanks of hair were not obvious... at first. She was very clever with the styling.

I went home with lovely long curls. No apologies. No one admitting that anything had gone wrong.

I was young and shy and I had no real salon experience. As a girl, my mom usually trimmed my hair I was completely intimidated. I never said a word.

Of course as my hair grew out it was obvious that something was wrong. I had about a two-inch wide section of hair over my left eye that sort of looked like a child's scissor experiment. It took about a year for it to grow out long enough to tuck behind my ear. I also had a cowlick that popped up if I parted my hair a certain way. Every once in a while I will see a photo of myself from that time and see the stupid reminder of my vanity.

It was a very long time before I went to a hair salon again.