Hair Despair

When I look through the piles of photo albums we have that catalog our lives, one question always pops into my mind: why did I wear my hair that way??! It seems that no matter what the era, my hairdo always looks stupid to me now. Maybe at the time I wore each style it was (unbelievably) in vogue--or wouldn't my friends and family have told me it wasn't?!
I started kindergarten with a pixie cut and by first grade looked like Opie Taylor. From then on I let it grow, and by my junior year in high school it was down to my butt. I had heavy thick bangs that hung in my eyes and probably led people to think I was covering up a caveman forehead. Before my senior year, I broke up with my boyfriend and wanted a new look, so I got it cut shoulder-length and kept it like that until the summer after sophomore year at UW-Eau Claire. Then I decided I wanted to look like Princess Diana. The beautician cut it a lot shorter than hers, but I liked it ok and kept it that way until 1983 when I got a Little Orphan Annie perm. That's how I was wearing it at our wedding (picture to come later this fall) and for much of the '80s. In the last part of that decade when I was pregnant with Katie, I got a different cut, and it looked like a curly red version of Cleopatra's triangular wedge. Personally, I think it's the worst look I ever wore, but nobody clued me in!! The '90s brought a mullet look that evolved gradually into the new millennium and the way I wear it now. Of course, there were a few variations in lengths and shapes during the years I wore each style, but I can say emphatically that they all mortify me now.
Twenty years in the future I may look back and think my current style looks ridiculous. However, by then I'll be more concerned that it's silver instead of red. Nobody is fooled by a redheaded 80-year-old. But I just said a few days ago that I don't mind being a dork--so I just might draw my last breath with a shade of russet or strawberry or carrot on my head. It will not, however, be curly or shaped like a triangle.