[Surprise! Surprise! At long last, a blog post. I’ve decided what might work best is to focus on putting the proverbial pen to paper writing stream of consciousness style rather than working towards anything else for the moment. I want to tell stories! I want to write. I want to write (mildly) unfiltered stories.]
I recently finished a book called LaRose by Louise Erdrich. In the story, three teenaged sisters put mayonnaise in their hair to condition it. This called to mind the time I did the same thing.
I was a sorority girl at a large state university in the 80’s living with 60 girls simultaneously. And yes, it was a long time ago and that’s a lot of girls to live with.
We took all the quizzes in Cosmo and bonded over boy talk and sex talk (sometimes overlapping discussions, and other times not…) and girl stuff. It was equal parts fun and stressful. I am, and forever will be, a girls’ girl most probably due my positive sorority experience.
Junior year, a group of sisters gathered in the community dining room to study. It was finals week and I decided it was the perfect time to condition my hair with mayonnaise because Cosmopolitan magazine said it was the natural way to improve and grow it. I figured I could kill two birds with one stone. Ace my tests and have fluffy yet smooth hair at the same time. Made lots of sense.
I slathered French sauce all over my head then pressed on tin foil to fashion a form fitting cap in order to add some heat to the process (this part was my idea!). I set out to pound through my Business Law chapters. In hindsight, I am not sure I would recommend the foil part because there was some weird dripping involved.
One of many prudish house rules was visiting boys had to be announced and were only allowed in the formal living room, which had glass doors creating an intentional fishbowl effect.
“Gina, you have a visitor.”
“Who is it?”
“Dave Henry.”
“F&%k!!!!! No!!!!!”
You see, I made out with him over Spring Break a few weeks prior and I kind of liked him. And now he was waiting in the living room to see me.
I did the only thing a slightly vain college girl with a crush could think of in a pinch.
Though I am pretty sure he knew I was home, I told one of the sisters to tell him I wasn’t home, crawled out the dining room window and ran through the dark lawn to the back door so he wouldn’t see me in my silver space cap.
Let’s just say things with him frizzled out from there, but my hair was silky soft.
