Page 67 - 1938

My pulled-back-put-up hair certainly added nothing to my looks! So the next day I went to a beauty parlor, and had my long hair—whose length was the fruit of many scraggly days and stringy nights—had my hair, the pride of my head, cut off.
As I sat in the barber’s chair and heard the scissors click, and saw in the mirror my long locks slithering to the floor, I could have wept. However, I managed to control my­ self, so that when the hairdresser—a fussy little man of about fifty with a sharp face and sleek hair and suave manner—asked me whether I would like my new hair “page boy,” I was able to say “yes” and produce the photograph I had found.
I was then turned over to one of the girls who, having started off the ceremony by ordering chewing gum, and chewing it in a most resounding fashion, said I had ruined my hair with sun and wind, and “it was all striped.” She then gave me a vigorous and neck-breaking shampoo, during which she told me of their new “permanent machine” which did not have to be attached to electricity. Only the irons are heated by it and then clamped on.
“With most people, we leave ’em on about three minutes, but your hair’ll need about four. Dry, bleached hair usually does.”
At this point she was giving me a hearty hair rub which made me shake so that I had to clamp my teeth shut in order not to bite off my tongue. I therefore answered nothing.
“Here, Min. Mrs. MacAire's done now.” (I had a mental picture of a roast duck, smoking as it came off the fire, and another picture of another duck, myself, being placed —-in all its plucked white softness—into the pan.)
After having been nearly asphyxiated by the ammonia, which is part of the cere­ mony, 1 was clamped on a practice curler for four minutes. After some experiments with a comb and water they told me that my four minute curl had no “kick.” This seemed to be some sort of beauty parlor crisis. The whole staff was called, and my curl-which-re- fused- to-“kick” exhibited. They were all greatly impressed and also slightly chagrined. Finally the head hairdresser said in an I’ll-take-the-blame-if-she-dies tone, “Cook her for five minutes.”
Then they all went away, and my girl, obviously a little nervous and very much subdued, came and fastened the curlers on. (I need hardly say that she was in only a slightly anxious frame of mind compared with the state of nerves I had reached.)
I was “cooked” for five minutes.
Then she started taking the things off. The one in the back had been burning me for four of those minutes, and. though I had told her this, she firmly denied it, saying that the new machine never burned people. 1 thought I was the best judge of that, but I let it go as I was afraid she would get upset and forget to undo me.
As I had a quantity of attachments, and she only started taking them off after five minutes, I’m sure six had passed before she reached the last one—which seemed to grow hotter. I heaved a sigh of relief as the last came off, and again I was free in a not-so-bad
world.We now came to the anticlimax of rewashing and setting and drying. When finally I was put under the last drier, I looked at my watch. I had been there for three and a half hours, and they had promised, “Oh, permanents never take more than three hours!”
I walked out of that place a changed person—physically and mentally. One need only look at me to see the physical change, and I knew, deep down in my mind, that 1 would never be the same carefree person again. For within five hours 1 had been cooked, had risked drowning in soap, dared death by ammonia suffocation, and flirted with Fate by taking a chance on being “overdone.”
F. C., ’39. Page Sixty-three