When your hair is two feet long, or hell, even close, do not forego all logic and think (even though you know better) that you’re going to put hot rollers—with TEETH—on your own head. Please, please, please trust me on this. I stupidly, or brazenly, thought I could manage my coif on my own, using these cream-colored, circa-1970 hot rollers—you know, the ones that can double as mini torture devices in a pinch. Well, now I stand corrected.
So yesterday, I’m in my bathroom getting glam for a wedding. Suddenly, I feel the need to do something different with my hair. I’m thinking loose Gisele Bundchen waves, or something like that since she has a head of hair that is truly unrivaled. First I give my very, very long bangs a little trim…they are slightly tapered. I take some off the ends so they’ll hold the waves better. Now bear in mind that my mother is a professional hairdresser, yet I’m at home chopping on my own hair. I can’t get an appointment with the woman these days. But that’s another story.
I’ve plugged the rollers in and they’re hot, so I get ready to start. First problem: my arms aren’t long enough to stretch to the full length of my hair so I can roll from the bottom up. I have to kind of go three-quarters, wrap the ends, then roll the rest of the way. It’s a pain-in-the-ass process, for sure. But I am determined, damn it! I will have sexy loose cascading waves!
I start at the back top of my head, and actually get about six rollers in before the %#@* completely hits the fan. The first roller is beginning to sort of keel over to one side and the hair that’s wrapped around it is kind of falling over the edges instead of being coiled tight around the roller. Having had a bit of an entanglement before, I see this and decide, uh, no, I’d better give this up. I’ll have to stick to stick straight. So I begin to unroll the first roller I put in. Hmmm. Lovely. It’s really not budging. I try to pull a few hairs out of the sides to loosen in, but I quickly learn that it ain’t happenin‘, and I’ve got no one to help me get the damn thing out. The more I try to make sense of it, the tighter wound each strand seems to get. I struggle with the roller, spew a boatload of f-bombs, turn red, get pissed and contemplate what I’m going to do.
My first thought is to make myself a martini, chill, then figure it out as the Bombay Sapphire courses through my veins and begins to numb my body, hair follicles, and mind. But then I think it might not be good to head into my old church with gin on my breath. Hey, ya’ll! How ya been? I can just see my smug gin-induced mug in church. It was hard enough for me not to audibly dog the priest’s 25-minute lecture stone cold sober. But I digress.
OK, so where was I? Let’s see. I’m half naked…a roller stuck in the back of my head. I think: Do I call my sister-in-law and beg her to come help me? No. I’m not one to cry for help. I mean, the roller HAS to come out because I can’t cut it out, so there has to be a solution, right? So I begin tugging hairs at the sides. Jiggling the roller, trying to loosen it. After more f-bombs,more tugging, more frustration, the roller finally comes out. Along with a nice clump of my hair. I’m devastated. And there is still another roller in the back of my head that’s looking disturbingly similar to the first. I think there’s no way another one is going to get stuck like the first one.
Now I’m officially running late due to the unforeseen hair fiasco, so I’ve got to get these rollers out and get moving. I pull the roller pin off the second roller and begin to unwind. One inch, two inches…I’m good. Three inches, four…I feel some resistance…a little more working it…oh %#@*! It’s stuck. You have got to be kidding me.
I did eventually get the second roller out with less hair loss. I figured out to use the teeth on my teasing comb to loosen the hairs on the roller. By this time my mom is here and she graciously takes over. She sprays my hair with product and proceeds to give me beautiful waves at the last minute…with a curling iron! God. Rollers. Never, ever again.
And by the way, we were late to the wedding. But the good thing about Greek weddings is they are so long you can be late and there’s still enough wedding left to make you wonder when it will ever be over. And of course, I rolled my eyes to my mom throughout the entire all-in-Greek-let’s-do-it-super-freakin’-old-school-style lecture the I-love-to-hear-myself-pontificate-priest gave.
Yes, people, I’m going to rot in hell (I should’ve had that martini). But damn, my hair looked hot.
