Self-Compliment

Men, this post is on hair. Feel free to move on.
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I like compliments, I won't lie. Well, I like compliments coming from an individual. The kind you get when someone in a group loudly gives you a compliment so everyone kind of turns and examines you makes me squirm. Still, a compliment's a compliment. And today, I needed one. It's only a little past noon and it's been a crappy day. I'll spare you most of the details, but to refer to a recent blog, that headlight I used to strong-arm to blink on every night has now steadfastly refused to shimmer, so I'm worried about meeting my friendly neighborhood cop on the way home from Shop-n-Smile tonight. We'll leave the bitching of today to just one.

It was just lunch and I had parked on the road and ran into the big University Center to get my lunch and buy a one-day parking permit. I was playing that game you play with the parking checkers here, since they're notorious here for handing out parking tickets like pediatricians hand out lollipops. I needed to buy the permit, grab my lunch, and get back to my car before it got a shiny new parking violation. Universities are always such a colossal pain when it comes to parking.

So, I was in the salad bar line, trying to turbo-make my salad, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see the woman next to me giving me the body language for, "Hurry up, move over. I'm making my salad too!" So, I moved over politely and continued building my masterpiece.

Then, I got the signal again. So again, I stepped over and continued. When I felt it a third time, I suddenly heard her exclaim, "I'm so sorry, I'm just starting at you! Your hair is so beautiful!"

I looked up, both startled and flattered, into the face of a woman about my height, also with blue eyes, and with hair about the same length as mine. Her hair was a bit blonder (mine's kinda strawberry-light-brownish) and a bit curlier. I thought it was beautiful. It wasn't exactly a doppelganger moment, but it was close enough.

"Oh, well it looks just like yours!" I said smiling.

"Oh no," she said, "Yours isn't as curly. It's more wavy and nice."

"I wish mine was more curly!" I said, and then began to feel self-conscious about this salad bar line mutual admiration society. "Thank you!" I added with some enthusiasm.

And then we continued on with our lives. But I felt a little zing of happiness with the compliment.

It's funny, I always hated my natural hair. Being wavy, it unfortunately isn't Rapunzel-like cascading waves either, it has always been dry, frizzy, and basically bumpy. You know, the one side flips up the other side flips under kind. I blew it straight several times a week for years and years until when living in NYC an instructive and insistent curly-hair salon stylist and the overwhelming number of lovely, curly-haired heroines at the Jewish organization I worked for inspired me to go natural. Plus, with all the curly hair products that have exploded onto the market, I can help to "enhance" my hair's waviness into something more controlled and appealing. I have now fully-accepted and have even come to love my hair just as it is (well, enhanced as it is). It feels good.

Well, let's just hope I'm still as self-loving after I chop off about a foot of it in the near future. I'm not self-loving how long it takes to dry hair that goes to the middle of my back.

On another note, oOoOOoh, I just ate three pickles! The day's getting even better. Now, where did I put those Sugar Babies?