When Mom arrived, looking sweet and feminine and not at all like the social saboteur she really was, I was forced to twirl
around next to the desk where the cashier sat, so everyone could experience my total and complete public humiliation. Earlene chatted with my mother, pointing out the way my hair came to a little flip in the back - hence the
"duck tail." I knew Monday would be hell. Junior high school was already a miserable place for me - especially with the creative hairdos my mother invented in her spare time. But with a duck tail as my crowning
glory, my popularity was bound to reach new depths.
I was accustomed to my place in the school pecking order, far beneath the golden cheerleaders - girls with sleek, long hair who were allowed to wear lipstick and
nylons. I had my nylons hidden in my pajama drawer and my lipstick - Tangee Peppermint Pink - I kept in the waistband of my skirt, where, warmed by body heat, it would become too soft to use as a stick, instead being smeared on my
lips with my fingers.
My lipstick was the color of Pepto Bismal and it made my mouth smell like one of those big peppermint sticks you get at Christmas. It wasn't very flattering, but then I didn't buy it for the color. I
bought it because it was lipstick and it only cost a dime and I wasn't allowed to wear it. But no amount of illegal lipstick could make that duck tail pretty and I knew it.
As soon as I arrived back home I locked myself in
the bathroom and washed my hair, trying to get rid of the hairspray. Then I spent hours combing, arranging and rearranging my hair until I came to the unhappy conclusion that duck tails, like elephants, were very hard to disguise.
On Monday I went to school with a dread normally reserved for gangplank walking. My mother chirped her way through breakfast, inordinately pleased with the haircut that was about to sentence me to junior high hell until it
grew out. At that time, children were deemed hardy enough to walk several miles to school no matter how bad the weather and besides, my Daddy had the car. So I walked to my friend Betty's house.
Betty wore her light brown
locks in a little flat hairdo that curled under all the way around like a Frisbee had melted on her head. Her mother never had Toni Home Permanent fever.
"It isn't that bad," Betty said, although her voice told me
she was lying. "Maybe no one will notice."
They did, of course, although probably not as much as I thought they would. I was, after all, fairly invisible in those days. But eventually the humiliation did pass, as I
discovered the ultimate cure for bad haircuts, shapeless gym uniforms and flat chests.
Time
