where DID you get your perm?

Every once in a while, when I have my hair done, I get a compliment or two. I have a feeling people see that someone actually spent more than five minutes with a blow dryer on my tresses, and it shows. I think it's funny sometimes when people comment on how good I look, because they are probably just noticing the contrast from the days when I have done absolutely nothing more than wash my face, brush me teeth and brush my hair. I think men have it lucky for the most part in that sense.

When Ed and I were first married, we worked hard at spending as little as possible so we could save for our first house and get ourselves situated in life. We did our grocery shopping at Erie County Farms, where we needed to wrestle our way through the line to get the 8 pound bags of chicken thighs for 29 cents a pound. I still remember being 8 months pregnant with Anna, and having some little old lady nearly knock me over for her bag of chicken when the butcher came out with a shopping cart filled with budget poultry.

Beyond cheap chicken, I also found a place that offered hair cuts for six dollars and perms for six dollars. Maybe the perms were twelve dollars, because I recall paying eighteen dollars for my perm that day. I can't imagine I would have even given a six dollar tip. My memory is sometimes blurred, but most of that day is still very clear in my mind. In the eighties, perms were very much in style, and I wanted big hair just as much as the next girl. After nearly three hours of waiting in line, being shuffled from a shampoo lady to a perm lady to a hair cut lady, I looked in the mirror and realized my hair wasn't permed--it was incinerated. I was afraid to touch it because I was certain it would crumble in my fingers. I quickly fled the mall, careful not to bump into the doors with my extra wide hair berth, and rushed home to dive onto the requisite newlywed plaid sofa in our family room. I remember the sofa, because I must have let Ed take a picture of me in a moment of weakness that day.

Ed is usually very sweet (savvy, too I guess) and tells me I'm looking good even when I'm not. But if you ask him about my perm that day, after he stops laughing, he'll tell you how truly terrible it was. You might call it a hair raising experience for me. But the last laugh came a few weeks into my "what not to hair" experience. I was dropping our dog off at the groomers, and who do you think was grooming a darling little cocker spaniel.....

I wonder how much they paid her for that?