Snip! Snip! And… goodbye pigtails!

Goodbye Pigtails!

They were fun… until they weren’t.  By the time my pigtails were getting long enough to braid — which had been my CHG (Covid Hair Goal) — I had to face up to the fact that I my old gray locks were just too wimpy to do anything with.  Eighty-five-year-old hair, at least on my particular head, doesn’t have the volume it takes for even one braid.  Damn!

Indistinctive Again

So, I called on the kindness of a friend and she did the dirty deed — a serious haircut.  I wish I could say that eleven months of sheltering robbed me of my natural curl.  But no such luck.  With each snip of the scissors, a new curl emerged.  I could clearly hear each one say a different cuss word — as in what Mary Anne Shaffer, author of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society famously said: “Naturally curly hair is a curse and don’t ever let anyone tell you different.”

Fun While It Lasted

Short, curly hair is also the “norm” for almost every little old gray-haired lady who is still up and taking nourishment.   So, now I are one again. (Is the opposite of distinctive, indistinctive?)  I couldn’t even feel badly because I knew full well what would happen.  Nyel, however, apparently did not.  As I was making my to-cut-or-not-to-cut decision, I made the mistake of showing him a picture of a “pixie haircut” that I liked because it partially covered the ears.  (I hate my sticky-outie ears!).  “My hair is too curly to look like this.  I just want her to leave it long enough for ear coverage,” I told him.

He didn’t get it.  (Do guys ever?)  When I came home for the Big Reveal, he looked absolutely dumbstruck.  And not in a good way.  “What???” I asked (even though I knew.)  He hedged a bit but under pressure finally said, “But I was expecting it to look like the picture…”

Oh well.  Some days are like that.  And now, they will all be like that.  It’s a curse, for sure!

4 Responses to “Snip! Snip! And… goodbye pigtails!”

  1. Bonnie says:

    You are beyond adorable. Mine is totally gray and straight as a razor. If only! My mom’s was curly, even in her truly disheveled last few months. Like Charlie Brown’s little red-headed girl, we all want what we don’t have – no?

  2. Jane Smith says:

    Congratulations on the hair cut! I think it is adorable. You hit a subject that I really don’t understand. My hair is not gray (though gray-ing) and I am 73. In the last few years it has started to curl…..much more than you have pictured. Why? I have given up and just let it curl, but only a few years ago it was not curly, though it has always been wavy.

  3. Dian Schroeder says:

    Sydney … I too fight my natural curls, mostly because they are contrary, they never go the way I want. My hair dryer, round brush and flat iron are my best friends in this struggle. Takes about 10-15 minutes but worth the time (so says my vanity). :-)

  4. Jo says:

    Love the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society reference! I just reread it. It is so wonderfully written, and always makes me laugh and cry. One of my favorites. I love the new do!

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