On Hair

I've always been pretty lazy when it comes to my hair. The fact that it was an event worthy of blogging for me to curl my hair yesterday should give you an indication of my general hair laziness. Pigtails and ponytails and braids take a few minutes, tops, and tend to last all day. But I really enjoyed Kate's post about the potential joys of a high-maintenance haircut. It took me back to my first semester of college.

I had short, short hair. It was short because I had buzzed it all off eight months earlier. If you ever want a low-maintenance hair-cut, a buzz-cut is the way to go, but be aware that the year of waiting for it to grow in might be more maintenance than you're used to.

My first week at college, I met Zach. The first thing he said to me was, "You should have purple hair." I shrugged, and said, "Why not?"

Later that week, we bleached my hair platinum blonde, because dark brown won't take bright colours. It took a while to finish the bleaching, so when we were done, I decided that I would just leave it blonde for a few days, and do the purple later. In the meantime, I was cast in the school play as a blonde, so I had to delay the colouring until the end of the semester.

During my blonde days, I did a lot of fun, silly things with my hair. My hair is naturally very smooth, and was therefore always resistant to being held in place by bobby pins. But with all of the wonderful damage incurred by the bleaching, I could twist and pin my hair so it stuck out in every direction. It was great. I decided that this must be why blondes have more fun. But even my twisting and spiking was low-maintenance compared to my roommate, who seemed to spend twice as long as I did on her hair, just trying to make it hang straight with a little bit of curl. I never understood that. If I'm going to spend time coiffing, I want dramatic results.

Here's a picture of me with my parents from the weekend of the school play. They knew that I wanted to dye my hair purple or red shortly after the performance, so they decided to beat me to the punch and come down for the weekend with their hair dyed purple and red. If you ever wondered why I am such a freak, you now know: I come by it naturally.