Hairball

This week while painting the kids' rooms, I passed the 10 o'clock hour listening to a classic rock radio show called "Hairball", which features the Big Hair bands of the 80s. I sang along with Journey (Stone in Love: "Those crazy nights, I do remember in my youth...I do recall, those were the best times, most of all"), Quiet Riot (Cum On, Feel the Noise), Scorpions (Rock You Like A Hurricane). I was surprised at how readily the lyrics sprang back into my head after all these years.

Then tonight, while sitting here at the computer, I started singing along with something that was playing on the TV in the background. Truly, I wasn't even aware that I was singing until Dani said, "MOM. How do you know this song??" I had to stop and think. What was I singing? "...I'll stop the world and melt with you....".

"It's an '80s song," I said.
"WHAT? Who sang it?" she demanded. She was offended that I knew a song that her beloved Bowling for Soup guys were singing.

"Huh. Was it The Police? No. The Cars. No, that's not right, either. Huh. I can't remember."

A google search reminded me that it was Modern English (what did I EVER do before Google??)

Everything comes back around. In the 70s, brown was THE COLOR, but I thought it was hideous. Appliances came in brown, avocado and harvest gold, and they were ugly. This week, I painted Dani's room... brown... and I love it.





In the 80s, Big Hair was the ONLY hair. I had poofy peacock-plume bangs and teased roots, and spent my allowance on superultramegaAquaNet to hold it all in place. I had these things on the side of my head that can best be desribed as ... man. I can't even think of a good description. But I remember how I acheived the look. I'd take the chunk of hair that fell in front of my ear, drench the roots of it in AquaNet until it dripped, then lean sideways and blow-dry the life out of that chunk, so that when I stood upright again, that chunk of hair remained at a 90 degree angle to my cheekbone. It was AWESOME.


It took me years to get over big hair. By the time my 10-year reunion rolled around in 1997, I was beginning to feel okay about going out in public with stick-straight hair. But I STILL felt the need to give my bangs some poof. Jennifer Aniston had stick-straight hair without an ounce of poof, but I still couldn't get past it.

I've been growing my bangs out since July. I've never not had bangs, and since mid-October, they've been on my very.last.nerve. I kept thinking that I'd get used to them. I kept telling myself that if I let them grow just a little bit longer, they'd behave themselves. But the week before Christmas, I'd gotten over it. I went in to see Madalyn, told her that if she couldn't cut my hair and make me like my no-bangs in the process, I was gonna chop the whole mess of it off myself. So she trimmed off 2 inches, gave me long layers again, and said, "Let 'em keep growing. In a month, they'll be where you want 'em."

I don't think I can make it that much longer. Today, it took everything in me not to take Ian's play sword and start hacking away at the bangs. Instead, I went to the bathroom, pulled out the bottle of AquaNet (it comes in a plastic bottle now, not the purple aluminum can with silver fishnet stripes across it), sprayed my bangs down, and gave them the ol' blow-dry. Darren walked in and without meaning to, let his eyes pop. "You're all fixed up," he said. I think what he meant was, "Your hair is big! But I'm not gonna say a word."

For an hour, I was happy. My bangs were AWESOME. Then the molecular structure of the AquaNet broke down, and so did my bangs. Right into my eyes.

Now that I'm finally over the nekkid feeling I used to get when I wasn't weighted down with AquaNet, Big Hair will probably come back. But I won't care this time around. I'd probably fall over and crack my head on the toilet seat if I tried to achieve The Hair these days. So I'll just settle for stick-straight. And when I'm feeling nekkid, I'll crank up Hairball and sing along like it's 1985.