A Hair-raising Story!

I know how lucky I am to be able to grow my hair out.  From what I gather, many of you wear wigs for varied reasons. Maybe your hair grows out but is too thin to properly style, maybe your hair has receded or maybe you just prefer to wear wigs to complement your outfits.

For most of my early years up through college and the military I pretty much kept my hair very short.  Even though I was occasionally dressing up I was very closeted and had bought an inexpensive wig just to compliment whatever I decided to actually dress up with.

By then I was married and was working jobs that were not conducive to having long hair, so I kept it short. Eventually I had an office-type job that was very liberal and could care less about hair length so I took advantage and decided to let it grow out and, to my surprise, it grew very straight, thick, and very fast. Before long, my hair was lush and down to my shoulders. Taking advantage of this opportunity I also began to dress up in earnest.  My dressing became more than a desire; it became an obsession!

My wife, at first, was not bothered much by my occasional dressing and never objected to my hair length which, by then, went past my waist. Wearing it that long meant I had to figure out how to wear it up so it wouldn't be in the way all the time so mostly it was gathered up on top of my head in a bun or a long ponytail down my back.

At first I thought taking care of my hair would be problematic. It turns out all I needed to do, besides washing and conditioning, was brush it and leave it alone.  Eventually I thought I should try and see if I could have it styled which turned out to be a challenge.  A stylist worked on it a few times and, while I liked waves and curls she commented on how stubborn my hair was to style.  My hair was stubborn and bobby pins, barrettes and other clips wouldn't stay in.  I really couldn't afford the bi-weekly visits to the salon so I pretty much asked my wife to give me a monthly trim and keep the length down to my shoulders.  Eventually I found ways to tame my hair and have it behave.

Raising my hair has caused a few stories, however.

During the time I started to let it grow my older brother teased me quite a bit.  I was defensive about it but that didn't stop him, of course. He ran a car repair shop and I worked there for a summer helping out.  My hair was almost to my shoulders by this time and I think I was wearing just a headband to hold it in place.  One day he had me crawl under a car, for what reason I've forgotten. To do the job I had to get on a "creeper", one of those low-slung, 4-wheeled carts used by mechanics to access under a car without jacking it up.  You can probably guess what happened.  Getting under was fine, but getting back out was when the drama started.  Rolling back out some of my hair got trapped in one of the wheels!  Rolling back and forth only made it worse.  I knew yelling for help would only make my brother laugh and tease me even more than usual so I did the only thing I could think of and yanked my head up far enough to rip a sizeable amount of hair out and it coiled in the wheel.  I didn't say anything and acted normal as I rolled out.  What choice did I have?  While my brother was occupied elsewhere I managed to remove the evidence and nothing was ever said but my scalp paid a costly price. I lost about an inch and a half diameter hunk of hair!  After that I also had a few occasions of catching my blowing loose hair in the wind while rolling up my car window but I wised up and was always able to rescue myself from losing any more hair.

One year my wife and I decided to see if my hair would dread up, just for fun.  She made small braids in my hair and I wore it like that for a couple months but decided I didn't like it and asked her to un-braid it.  It was a warm summer day so we went outside and it took about an hour to remove the rubber bands and untwist the braids.  As I shook my head around to help my hair free itself we felt a very strong and sudden shaking in the ground.  An earthquake!  We stood there, amazed, as we watched the trees and utility poles sway while we tried to stay upright.  It was over in, maybe, a minute or two.  As we were trying to gather our wits we heard a voice coming from a house across an alley behind and above us.  "You okay down there?" the neighbor asked.  We both sort of laughed and made some trite comments like "Oh yeah!" and "That was a big one!"  It wasn't till after we went back into our house that I looked in the mirror and I realized my hair, now totally unbraided, was standing out in all directions all over my head, like a cartoon character.  It was then that I realized why the neighbors seemed so concerned. They already knew I wore my hair long and straight, so they must have thought the earthquake scared the bejesus out of me from fright.

There is one very odd thing that my hair does by itself.  I enjoy finger-combing my hair when it is down but occasionally I will feel a thick spot, like a snag, near the bottom of a single strand.  When I singled out this one hair I looked through a microscope and found that one hair tied itself into a knot about an inch or two from the bottom. I had no idea what caused it but I did a little research and subsequently found that this happens to others.  Some say that split ends can be the culprit but I rarely have those.  Or it is a result of having curly, coily hair but my hair is very straight.  I have come to not worry about how and why it happens, I just clip off the knot above the knot.

Remarkably I have noticed only a few gray hairs appearing now and then but I just ignore them.  My hair does what it wants and I have very little control over it.

Thanks for taking the time to read my hair raising article! Please take a few minutes to either send in a comment to my article or an answer to one or more of my questions posed to you below:

• When you dress up in full up femme mode, do you wear a wig or use your own natural hair?
• How many wigs do you own in your selections of wigs?
• What color and length of hair do you think is the best fit for you while you’re getting your total girl on?

I look forward to your comments or answers to my questions.

Most sincerely, Mary