My white friends called me Micky Mouse and my Black friends said I had Afro Puffs

I remember my only hair style growing up.  My White friends called me Micky Mouse and my Black friends said I had afro puffs.  Me, I didn't really know what to think except I hated my hair because it was SO painful to get it into a state where it was combable - I mean, now that I think about it...was it ever combable..sheeeesh.  Some of my earliest memories of my hair are laden with grease and screaming and swim caps.  The washing process happened weekly and I DREADED it...with all of my being.  I'd take a bath, wash my hair (which is SOOO thick - it used to be thicker) and have to sit in the dining room in a wooden chair and have my mother - my poor sweet yet Black girl hair ignorant mother - try to comb my hair.  Early on, my hair was natural - it wasn't until around 9 that my mom was introduced to that "creamy white crack." 

While my hair remained natural, my mom would comb, grease, part and put up in too puffs on the top of my head.  My head would continue to throb for days but slowly my hair would escape the hair ties and my puffs would slowly disappear as "kitchens" at the back of my neck would bead up.  After I got a relaxer, I thought life would be better.  Initially my hair was so long and so deceivingly healthy.  Slowly my ends were starting to shatter and split..my hair started losing it's extreme thickness.  Every week after my bath and hair washing, I'd again have to sit in a wooden chair and my mom would part my hair, add grease, and blow dry my hair section by section - this process could take up to an hour or so depending on how "beaded" it got throughout the week.  I would always pull my hair back in a bun at the nape of my neck and wear my bangs curled over my forhead...so 80's and so TERRIBLE.  I would start to look like I had been sitting in a wind tunnel - such an interesting wild wind blown look....with thick but whispy strands of hair flying all over my head  I kind of looked like a cotton ball that someone had pulled peices random peices and left just flying around.  My head looked twice it's size because my "straight" hair could never really be straight so it puffed up! 

In the summer, my sister and I were always running around doing EVERYTHING...other than sweating a lot and beading up our hair...we liked to go swimming...Unfortunately, after the relaxers...we were introduced to swim caps!  NO!!! Not swim caps...those things had me and my sister going to the public pool looking like two chubby Q-tips...LIKE REALLY?!  "Well you don't want your hair to fall out do you!?"  I don't remember if this was directly said to me, but that was the fear...I think the swim cap was the reason for the decline in our summer swimming...:(  or shall I say the relaxer was the reason for the decline in swimming because NOW I had to wear an ugly, rubbery, too tight and painful swim cap - that didn't even work that well!  GRRRR...

SO the Point.  I have such negative memories of my hair...SO much pain, grease, and ughhhhhhh

I want to change the perception of my hair journey and make some GOOD memories.  I hope this blog will be the tool to help that become possible. BUT, what I was HOPING was that ALL OF YOU wouldn't mind sharing your own hair stories!!  Good or bad, make us laugh, take us on a trip down memory lane! Share your funny hair stories.  Let's make light of our painful memories and then make some new GREAT ones!