I really deliberated about whether or not to share what I’m about to share. Because it’s embarrassing.
But the trouble is, it’s also good content. I mean, I know you’ll like this tale about my hair because ultimately, I like this tale about my hair. In this way, it’s inevitable: I have to tell you. This is the plight of the gal who has a blog about her life and who cares about being open with the readers who read her blog about her life. Sometimes, stuff gets real. Things are divulged.
Okay, here goes: I have a rather oily scalp.
Have you ever seen two words put together that were more unattractive than “oily” and “scalp”? I mean, “oily” ain’t ever good. It ain’t good in a puddle, it ain’t good in a pasta dish, and it sure as oil ain’t good when you’re talking about scalps.
And “scalp” has a hard, hard life. As a verb, it’s nightmarish; as a noun, it’s never not gross. No lover, ever in the history of the world, complimented his/her lover’s scalp. Scalps. Scalps! Just say it and you get the oogs. Scalps can be flaky. They can itch. They are differently toned than the rest of the body, oftentimes, and they feel chickeny. Most scalps involve hair, and hair is objectively weird.
Which brings me to my objectively weird hair. My hair, and yes, my oily scalp.
(It’s very hard to type when I’m groaning in shame with my eyes squeezed shut. I gotta get it together, here.)
So I have wimpy hair. My aunt Leesa used the term a couple years ago when I was visiting her in Sacramento. We were lamenting our hair issues and she said that it was a thing for Fonses, that wimpy hair runs in the family. (Thanks a lot, Gramma!) What “wimpy” means is that our hair is really, really fine. And while it doesn’t thin, it sort of is thin? If that makes sense? I’m telling you: It’s just wimpy. It doesn’t hold a curl well. It does not “volumize.” It might get “tousled” but it doesn’t stay “tousled.” It’s wimpy!
Well, over the past year or so, my hair has become more wimpy than ever because my scalp seems to be increasingly … you know, rhymes-with-foily. I don’t know much about hair, but wimpy hair like mine probably should stay away from, say, moisture; viscous substances; salves; pomades; goopy things; and, oh, I don’t know, maybe oil.
I used to be able to wash my hair every other day and that was good because of like nine reasons, one of which is that’s a lot of dough for shampoo, y’all, and another is that I do not have time to be washing my hair all the time for Lord’s sake. Yeah, well, these days, my hair is wimped out by the end of the day. Sometimes, it’s a matter of hours before I feel self-conscious about it. Please don’t picture me with Canola dripping off my head: It’s not like that. But whatever adorable poofiness I had going on when I left the house is so far gone by the time I get home in the evening, I’m baffled. And woe to me I run out of time to take a shower and wash my hair the next morning. Oh-ho, but I am a gross greaseball and I just want to put a hat on my head or cut the stuff off and be done with it.
And while I’m kind of making light of it, and “wimpy” is a funny word and it’s just hair, after all, we all know how tough the hair thing is, right?
One of the worst moments in my health crisis was the day my hair started coming out in clumps in the shower. And how inconsolable we become when we get a truly terrible haircut! And are “bad hair days” not a thing? They are. And the guys in our lives who lose their hair are often deeply shaken by the experience. Hair is complicated thing for a lot of people, including me. I want to feel attractive like anyone else. I want to feel cute, to feel sexy. And when the hair thing isn’t right, it feels really bad.
Tomorrow, I shall tell you how I have been battling all this, how I have spent a painful amount of money to remedy the situation, how many futile attempts I’ve made, and how I just might have found a solution in the most unlikely of places …
Okay, I found the solution in Walgreen’s. And a drugstore is not an unlikely place at all to find a solution to this problem. I just wanted to write, “in the most unlikely of places …” with the ellipsis after it, so you’d hear it like a line from a movie trailer or something.
Does anyone else have this problem, by the way?
See you tomorrow — with the good news.