Son Of A Butch. One Way To Spend a Fro-Zen Day Is, Well, One For the Record Books

Disclaimer: It was brought to my attention that the memory I have for perms in my home-front are not accurate. Dad actually went to a salon to have his curls put in. There may have been a hair-dying festival in the kitchen of my house, but there was no Salon work done on my dad by my sisters and mom. They say I must have demential. Even so, this is the way I remember it.

Sometime in the early 1980s, amidst Dynasty, Knot's Landing, and Dallas, my mother and sisters went through a phase of perming their hair. Actually, it may have been Lori Nikoloff, our neighbor, who started it, or perhaps it was Stephanie Caroli, my best friend's mom who kvetched with my mom about Days of Our Lives and who lived vicariously through the soap opera. 

"Sue, your husband still has hair," I imagine Stephanie saying in reference to Big Pete who was lacking with a shag-rug up top. "You can totally make your husband look like Roman Brady. That would be the ultimate fantasy for us Clay, New York women. Butch with a perm. He'd look like Mike Brady, but that would be so hot."

Of course, Stephanie would never talk like that, but this is my post and I'm writing from my imagination.

It is true that in the early 80s, I came home one night from riding my banana seat bike when my sisters and mom were giving each other salon perms, no Ogilve. All I remember is they all had these pink rods in their hair with foam padding and a terrible smell. One by one, they unraveled their heads so they looked like Little Orphan Annie, stuck with a day that was gray and lonely. That is, though, when my father, Butch, came out of nowhere with a request that he, too, wanted to have waves on his head. I'm not sure if it was too much Clam Bar or not (and it was wayyyyy before Karl and Chubby's), but my father decided he wanted to have curly hair, too.

I sat in the kitchen as an impressional, elementary school student thinking, "WTF?" Well, I didn't know those words then, but if I did, that is what I would have thought. My father was allowing my mom and sisters to treat his head as if he was a Barbie Doll?

The house smelled like ammonia. Then, after one evening, my mom, little sister, older sister, and DAD had curly hair. I was the adopted kid with my pin-straight bowl cut. Somehow, between Eight is Enough, Punky Brewster, and Quincy, I ended up in a house of curly q's - a short-lived, yet memorable moment in Crandall family history.

Fast forward. It is now 2015 and Chitunga came downstairs last night with a hair kit for relaxing his curls and making his waves more manageable. We were slurping soup when he handed me the box and I read the directions. "Dude, this is a layered process. These chemicals need 30 minutes to work and you're going to need to shampoo twice when you're done. You also will need to rinse in the sink."

All bravado, he responded, "Nah. I got this. I will do it in the bathroom sink." I was like, "Okay, but I think you're going to make my house smell like a Dupont chemical plant." I went to the couch to read a book, while he messed around with his head in the bathroom and a pair of yellow gloves meant to wash dishes. He came out a few minutes later looking like a 90 year old man with vast sea-foam in his hair. He acknowledge, "I must wait 30 minutes."

He tried, and was successful for about 20, when the substances began to burn his head. Then he screamed, "Hey, can you wash this out? It's burning the #$@# out of my scalp." I channeled my father's perm-event from my childhood and told Chitunga to kneel on a chair over the sink. I then sprayed the hell out of his Kool-Whipped head, getting rid of the mayonnaise he applied.

It wasn't perm night at 5388 Amalfi Drive. Nope, this was Hairspray, 2015, in Stratford, Connecticut.

After Chitunga was rinsed, he ran into the bathroom to apply formula A followed by conditioner B, and I went back to reading. I was thinking to myself, "Seriously? Did this just happen? Did I just wash Luster's S-Curl Comb Thru Texturizer, Extra Strength out of this kid's hair as it was burning his scalp and eyes?"

I did.

And I realized I spent the evening of my Snow-Day, completely Fro-zen. In his 'fro' I found a 21st century ZEN from the everything, I guess. It all is evolving at exactly the right time (Abu and Lossine, where were you on this one? This is your territory. This was out of my league).