Okay, it is Sunday evening. Still on the subject of hair. When I was being pushed out of my last job, I lost a lot of weight and slept my life away. I was in so much physical and emotional pain and some people got it, and others did not. I took to wearing wigs bought at the local hair store owned by Koreans who have a monopoly on this and work long hours; brilliant foresight for them, a missed opportunity for Blacks. Sidebar: Many Black Hair Companies were bought out by Non-Black companies, so you really have to look closely at the label if you want to know who you are buying from.

For example, African Pride is not Black Owned Company despite the name. There is the ” Proud Lady Symbol” on some products to let people know if the product they are spending money on is in fact a Black Owned Company. In previous decades there were protests and boycotts over this issue. I recall Revlon was targeted because of their Black hair-line and folks complained over mergers with White companies. So the hair that sisters fuss over so much is  big money-maker and stakes are high!! Perhaps this is why you don’t see a lot of sisters in swim meets, all those chemicals wreak havoc on hair.

I recall a Venezuelan student of mine had blonde hair that turned green due to chlorine in swimming pools. I wrote the name down of a product by Paul Mitchell called” Aloe Rid”, and you would have thought I discovered slice bread. This parent that probably cursed me out in Spanish because I kept the noisy class after for two minutes was later ecstatic that her pretty mami no longer had verde pelo. This girl is probably a stunner as an adult, I know. I would not be surprised if she was in a beauty pageant, because in Venezuela, they take pageants on a whole different LEVEL, maybe above Texas and California.

But back to me: two of my hairdressers found a bald spot in my hair several years ago. I thought nothing of it, and had no alarm. Well for three years I did not get my hair styled, I wore wigs! I also did not relax my hair, but did color my hair to cover the gray. Then I decided to use a no chemical relaxer by Janelle, Diva, something, there is the short-term memory loss. It did not work because of my lack of skill and or patience. Next came the straightening comb. Ahh, the smell of crispy fried hair and a stove fan. Colossal fail.

Okay, I will get a real relaxer from Sallie’s, and do my research from buyer reviews. Hair still horrendous, because I was afraid to leave the perm on, visions of  Malcolm Little getting busted by the popo and having to rinse the chemical out in the TOILET flashed through my mind; so the process was short-changed. (This was an early scene from the Spike Lee movie ” Malcolm X”)

I decided to go for the 3/4 wig or fall and placed my hand on my head. What was supposed to be thick, coarse hair was…….bare scalp! As Sarah Palin would say, WTF!!!! Tune in next time to find out what happened next!!!