The Curling Iron

My mother had a thing about little girls with curls.

(She was fond of reciting the verse, “There was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead….lol)

She would try and coax my pin straight hair into girly ringlets with a curling iron.

Back in ‘the day’ curling irons weren’t the cute little plug in jobs they are now.

They were long, heavy things that you heated up on the stove. (Yes, I really am that old!)

So, as my father stayed upstairs getting ready, my mother and I would trudge down to the kitchen to ‘do’ my hair.

I would sit on a stool next to the stove; my mother would heat up the curling iron, grab a section of hair, roll it up in the iron and have me hold it until it cooled. She would use the cooling time to multitask, doing the breakfast dishes or whatever else needed to be done.

One day as we were in the middle of this routine, my father came downstairs, shaving cream still on his face to ask, “What is that God-awful smell?”

My mother spun around from the sink, took one look at me and exclaimed, “Oh my God! It’s her HAIR!’

And there I sat, dutifully holding the curling iron as it burned my ‘curls’!

My mother grabbed the iron but it was too late. I still ended up with a huge ‘bald’ spot on the side of my head.

That day I got my first ‘pixie’ cut.