Curly hair

Something triggered a grade school memory recently.  Now I can’t even remember what the trigger was – a news article, a scene from a movie.  I don’t know.  Not important.  But my memory, the event that shaped me, that I remember.  I was in 4th or 5th grade.  The assignment was to draw the back of the head of the person sitting in front of you.  The kid behind me called the teacher and said, “I can’t draw that.”  Emphasis on “that.”  I had curly hair.  I still have curly hair.  And apparently it was too difficult to draw.  At the time, I was embarrassed.  I don’t remember turning around and confronting the kid.  Knowing the me back then, I probably kept quiet and maybe my face turned red.  My mother always told anyone who listened that when I was small she had to cut my hair with pinking shears because it was so curly.  And when I got slightly older, she would take me to the local hair stylist for the neighborhood black community to get my hair straightened.  The fumes, the pain.  My family all had straight hair.  I did not.  I just didn’t fit the basic family unit model.  I was the white girl with the curly hair.  I even heard the stupid milkman comments.  Nowadays, it doesn’t matter.  But growing up, my hair was the unwanted guest at the family holidays.  Fortunately, when I turned 18, I moved out and began to discover who I was, curly hair and all.