PERMAPALOOZA

Well, hello YOU!

(read that again but with your best Moira Rose voice in your head, or even out loud if you’re in the mood)

Today my topics are: Marsha (always a key player), My hair and…

Toni Home Perms.

My hair is straight. Yet in many childhood pictures (like, just so so many) you will see me with slightly wavy or even curly hair. Did my hair change over time?Yes but *not* on its own. My hair returned to it’s normal straight state once Marsha lost the right to style my hair.

I’m talking about Toni home perms. That’s right. Not a salon perm. A home perm. Marsha can perm her own hair in half an hour while rearranging a room, handling many important tasks and keeping the planets alignment. She’s that good. I have so many memories watching her get those perm rods precisely placed, the entire house reeking of noxious and toxic perm fumes. I assumed all moms did that; I’m sure many did.

I assumed I was safe from that experience and then one day (I was 10ish, the legal age your mom can chemically change the structure of your hair) and we were in the station wagon, chugging along somewhere and she glanced at me in the rearview mirror (Momovision) and said, “I’m going to give you a perm this weekend, to give your hair a little body”. I was surprised. I was a child, surely I already *had* a little body. It didn’t occur to me to ask her any questions. It was going to happen. I wasn’t concerned (she had been managing my hair all my life already), I was more concerned about the “body” word.

“Volume” wasn’t really a hair buzz word back then (that came with the introduction of L’oreal mousse, so fun to squirt a dollop on your palm and watch it grow magically into the size of an ostrich egg but omg, so sticky… my hope was that the home perm benefit would be not having to sleep in pink sponge curlers (like sleeping on pink rocks) on Saturday nights before church and also any night before Big Events.

So the weekend came and out came the surgical instruments: 1 toni home perm kit (I feel like she always had several on hand in case of a permergency [I just made that word up] and the prized box of perm curlers; she has had those suckers for at least 50 years, I can only imagine what they are worth on eBay) and the perm towel.

FYI, the contents of kit are as follows:

• Active solution
• Neutralizer solution
• 3000 tiny tissues
• Instructions that she never, not once, not ever even GLANCED at; she was a Pro
• NO GLOVES; no wonder she doesn’t have fingerprints

She propped me on the youth chair in the kitchen and looked at me to assess perm curler placement. Draped the Official Marsha Perm Towel over my shoulders. I wasn’t nervous and we were off to the races.

Those perm curlers are so freaking tight that you think you are trapped in an actual vise. I don’t know the exact process but I think it was:

• get a piece of hair and comb it like you mean it
• tell your daughter to be still over and over and over
• in one deft movement, dampen the piece of hair with the activation solution, grab a perm curler torture device and wrap the hair up in tissue and perm curler thing, roll baby roll and then snap it shut and hold hair hostage
• Repeat until done

We were about three perm curlers in and the smell was making my eyes water. My brother came in from the next room asking, “what’s that smell”, looked at me, said, “Oh God” (I think he was actually praying) and left to go upstairs but not without throwing me a look of pure joy at my situation first. We did not see him again that evening.

So once every strand was locked in perm jail, I think we had to wait 30 minutes. Or 30 years; not entirely sure. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. I knew I was in the hands of a qualified perm specialist, so I wasn’t worried but WOW, did my head feel weird. Squeezed, smelly and I wasn’t supposed to touch anything.

While we waited, we split a can of Coke (1 ice cube in the glass, always only 1) and ate popcorn out of the Official Yellow Popcorn Bowl.

The oven timer went off, so it was time for the neutralizer solution. Before I knew it, I was on my back on the kitchen counter, head in the sink and then she started squirting the neutralizer onto the perm curlers. That was the night I discovered my head was ticklish. I thought I was going to squirm off the counter but no need to worry; Marsha employed the same tactic she used when we were in the front seat and had to stop suddenly: arm thrown over us; The Mom Seatbelt. I was safe but was in tickling agony.

Then. I had to lay on the counter and let the neutralizer do it’s thing. After that, remove the curlers, rinse (BUT DO NOT WASH), go to bed on a fresh towel and wait for the results the next morning.

Repeat every 6-9 months until daughter reaches age 16.

The End