My life got simpler when I stopped fighting my curls. It only took forty years.

I didn’t have beautiful ringlets cascading down my back. Didn’t have sweet ringlets bouncing around my face either. My hair was more the poufy cloud of frizz hovering around my head.

That’s me on the left. Look at that hair! The body! The bounce! The refusal to do anything resembling style on a day to day basis, regardless of the weather! This was late elementary school.

And here we are in high school. POOF! (Yes, I know, the bangs are certainly something.) I don’t specifically remember but based on the general outline this was most likely a non-rainy day. Rain/humidity increases floof by a factor of five.

Anyway, if you look real close both of these show what I always thought was frizz. I mean, it was frizz but only because that high school pic is from the late ’80s and there was no such thing as curly girl products. Or basic education on how to deal with curly hair.

That’s probably why after I started working I kicked off several decades of trying to straighten my hair. All my curly folks can imagine exactly how successful this was. There were painstaking blow outs with my trusty Conair then eventually I added a straightener to my arsenal. Products improved and I’d even say I occasionally succeeded at forcing my curls into submission…sort of. A hint of rain to come, a bit of humidity, and straightener be damned, my hair would burst forth in all its poofiness.

And here we are today, graduated from the hair torture devices, embracing my wavy/semi-curly hair with a good conditioning routine and some decent gel. Does humidity still wreck havoc on this head? Yep, but we’re rolling with it.

It’s not like I have any other choice.

Linda hosts Stream of Consciousness Saturday. This week’s prompt is “curl.” Use it as a noun, use it as a verb, use it any way you’d like. Have fun!