You would think that scrubbing bathrooms, cooking dinners the kids don’t like and bleaching skid-marks out of boys’ underwear would satisfy anyone’s need for adventure.  You would think so, but I needed a new endeavor.  Something bold, something different, something that you don’t often see on a middle-aged Christian white lady.

I decided to go for dreadlocks.

 

You would think that scrubbing bathrooms, cooking dinners the kids don’t like and bleaching skid-marks out of boys’ underwear would satisfy anyone’s need for adventure.  You would think so, but I needed a new endeavor.  Something bold, something different, something that you don’t often see on a middle-aged Christian white lady.

I decided to go for dreadlocks.

After a little research on the internet, I approached Chuck with my idea.  “Chuck, I’ve decided that I want to dreadlock my hair.”  Wince in anticipation of his response.

“Oh, Okay; as long as you don’t have to cut it all off if you don’t like it.”  Not the response I expected from my uber-conservative husband.

“No, I won’t have to cut it.  I’ve done the research and if I want to get rid of the locks I just soak my head in V-05.”

“Hmmm.  Okay, whatever, V-05, V-06, as long as you can get it out.”

Later that day…..

“Hey, Cindy, what happened to the braids?”  Chuck asks.

“Braids?”

“Yes, you were going to braid your hair.”

“No, not BRAIDS,” I corrected, “DREADLOCKS and I’m using the NEGLECT method of locking.”

“Oh….”  His hopes were dashed.  The vision in his mind of Bo Derek running across the beach, slow motion in a scanty a high-cut bathing suit was suddenly replaced with an image of a Gorgon resembling a white Bob Marley with "puffs":http://gooblink.com/blog/index.php?id=82 and Chuck wasn’t diggin' that picture, mon.  In fact, the expression on his face was the same I remembered seeing once when we were standing in an all-you-can-eat buffet line and the big, fat guy with a cold ahead of us coughed up a lung onto the moo-goo-gai-pan.  Chuck’s favorite.

“...you mean that skanky hair?”  He asks.

“It’s not skanky hair!  I still wash it, I just don’t comb it!”

“So it ends up all matted and tangled?”

“Well, it’s supposed to form natural locks, eventually…after several weeks.”  Now I’m not even so sure that this is a great idea.

I ran the idea past a friend of mine the next evening (I hadn’t combed my hair in 2 days by now.)

“Dreadlocks?”  She asks, “Neglect method?  Are you pulling my leg?”

By the next morning, I felt a big hair-knot at the nape of my neck and started to think about how long I’d have to soak my head in V-05 if the whole thing was covered with knots as stubborn as this one. 

In the end?  I chickened out.  I washed, conditioned and COMBED my hair and stuck it in a ponytail where it belongs.

Maybe I’ll just train for a marathon, instead.