It’s tough being a teenager. It’s even tougher when the fashion is poker-straight, super long hair and yours is shoulder-length and curly. It’s the sixties. I’m sitting in my classroom and I’m doing my best to ignore the screechy sound of my teacher scribbling math formulas with chalk onto the blackboard. I glance across the aisle with envy at my classmate Nadine – she with the poker-straight hair. I watch as she blinks away those perfectly-trimmed bangs tickling her eyelids while simultaneously flipping back her long mane of hair with a saucy little toss over her shoulders.
Nadine is my best friend, but she cannot possibly know the teenage angst those actions are causing me. I’m determined – then and there in that math classroom – that things must change. Somehow. Somehow, my hair will look every bit as stylish as Nadine’s. I’m still preoccupied with this hair thing when the bus drops me off at the end of the lane at our farm, four miles from the village.
“I need big rollers!” I exclaim to my parents upon entering the farmhouse.
“What’s wrong with the ones you have?” asks my mom.
“They’re not big enough!” I reply with that whiny, high-pitched, hard-done-by teenage wail. I already own a set of the largest, pink plastic hair rollers that the general store in my village has for sale. But they don’t get the job done. They really are too small to achieve the desired look.
Superhero Dad to the rescue. Resourceful farmer that he is, my dad has the perfect solution. He disappears into the tool shed and returns with a hammer, a large nail and a bunch of aluminum pop cans. He then sets to work hammering holes into the pop cans with the large nail. Voila! New, big rollers for me!
The next morning, I shampoo my hair. I roll strands of wet hair around my new metal rollers and attach them to my scalp with bobby pins. Then I head outside to air dry my hair in the warmth of the late spring sunshine. But not so fast. Oddly enough, thick wet hair and metal aren’t the best recipe for a quick dry – even if there are holes for aeration. I’m stuck wearing those cans on my head all afternoon. And, wouldn’t you know it? My parents have company. They stare at me like I’m some sort of alien creature but are kind enough not to say anything.
Finally, after about four hours or so, my hair appears to be dry and I gingerly remove one pop can roller after another and brush out my hair. I grab a mirror to assess the fruits of my labour and… well, the good news is that my hair is no longer curly. The bad news is that my entire head of hair including my bangs is now puffed out in a rounded, moon-like shape. Not at all like Nadine’s hairstyle! I race for my stash of metal hair clips and proceed to pin down my hair, bangs and all. I’m thinking this will flatten my hair and perhaps the bangs will catch onto my eyebrows and stay put. However, as soon as I remove the hair clips…sproing goes the hair on the sides. Sproing go the bangs creating a sausage roll on my forehead. Sproing. Sproing.
Time to call on the professionals. My neighbour and good friend Iris is this farming community’s master stylist. She is self-taught and just has a knack for styling people’s hair. Maybe she can help me with my dilemma.
“Sit down,” says Iris when I arrive at her house. “I have an idea.”
She disappears into another room and reappears with an ironing board and an iron. She asks me to lay my bouncy hair on the ironing board and begins to iron it, bangs and all. Finally. My hair is straight!
In the 1990s hair straightening irons became commercially available. It only took the world 30 years to catch up to what us resourceful, teenage farm girls had figured out back in 1967.
Irene Pylypec 
Great story Irene. Remember those times well. Keep writing. I enjoy the blogs.
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Thanks! I was going to elaborate on your skills and submit an actual photo of your work but wrote the blog late last night and forgot to do so.
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