Deanna Moffitt

I’ve never been afraid to experiment with my hair. It’s been brown, red, auburn, blonde and by horrible mistake jet black. It’s been long, short, permed, straightened, bobbed, shagged, and mulleted. With every experiment that didn’t come out exactly as I had planned I would mutter, “Well, it’ll grow out.”

In the seventh grade I wanted my hair to look like Lori Dunlaps’s. She had feathered bangs that softly framed her beautiful face and the back of her hair had a really cool spiral perm, perfectly coiffed with just the right amount of crunchy, sticky hair gel. She was a year older than I was with a beautiful singing voice and a reputation of someone who the choir director secretly wanted to bone.

I begged my mom to take me to the Montgomery Ward Salon to give me that same look. Not realizing that Lori’s look was actually something she was growing out and her bangs had grown out first.

Tammi, the young, inexperienced hair dresser tried to talk me out of my plan of perming just the back half of my hair. But I wasn’t having any of it. I knew the picture in my head would translate if she would just put those perm rods in my hair and let me bake.

Tammi, was tentative in her perm rod rolling abilities. She also kept shaking her head while she was putting the rods in and saying things like “I don’t think this is going to work out, I’ve never permed just half a head before.”

When all the rods were in she asked if I wanted the new electric perm they were offering. It cost $10 dollars extra but it would cut the processing time in half. Mom had departed to look through all the Gloria Vanderbilt petite clothes in Montgomery Wards so I made the bold decision to say yes and assume that Mom would hand over the extra cash once she saw how cool my new head of hair was.

Each individual rod was now given the addition of a small heated clip making my head feel an extra 20 lbs heavier and appear to be some sort of crazy science experiment. But I didn’t care I was going to have awesome hair in half the time.

After 18 minutes the bell signifying my processing time rang just in time, as I had sat there and quietly suffered as my scalp, a virgin to the electric perm, had sizzled and blistered.

One by one the clips were taken out and then the sweet relief as the rods were dumped into the sink and cool water poured over my head.

“Uh, oh. Looks like you got some owies. That sometimes happens with this perm process.” Tammi dryly commented.

“Got some owies?” ”It sometimes happens?” come on Tammi you could have been a little more forth coming with that information before electrocuting me.

As she sat me up to face the mirror, still towel drying my tender head. I realized I had made a huge tactical error. I had not taken into consideration the fact that my current hair cut was a shag cut, with very short layers at the top. And this perm has now effectively stood those layers up on end giving them a slight bend at the end. The rest of my permed hair poofed out into a nice cotton ball effect. I look like a half blown dandelion.

My mom’s response when she returned with an armful of polyester pants from the GV collections was “Oh, Dee what have you done to yourself.” She laughed about the extra $10 dollars I spent to fry my head, took me home and put some much needed ointment on my blisters.

I still remember the stunned look on my friends faces as I showed up to school the following Monday and the echoes of laughter that quickly followed.

“Don’t worry” I said, “It’ll grow out.”