Take A Walk - Passion Pit
In a lot of ways relaxing your hair can be compared to love. You usually want to do it with someone who has experience with relaxing hair because you don't want to end up burnt or bald. If you do however do it with someone who does not have experience then you're really just hoping for the best, for your hair and facial skin.
However, unlike relaxer, there is no tutorial on how to love. You have to feel it in your bones. If you try and feel relaxer you might end up sued, or with a crying customer.
When I was younger and I would relax my hair they would put on the first two products and then told me to tell them when my head started itching. The itch "meant" that it was time to wash the relaxer off. I later found out that the "itch" was the relaxer eating away at the skin on my head, that's why they told you to tell them once it started.
In her defence the lady relaxing my hair was illiterate, but she was very good and she never burnt me. She always knew when to wash the second stage; which is what she called it, off before I got burnt. I don't even think that she fully understood the effect of relaxer. Most women didn't know or didn't care what was happening to their hair.
You can relax yourself, but personally I think that it would be hard, but if you knew what you were doing you were in no trouble.
The end of the relaxing process you either felt one of three things; happy with the results and then you'd go back and buy another set of relaxer so that you could relax you hair again in up to six weeks or more. Or you could sad because you don't like how your hair looks, you don't miss the way your hair looked, but the bottom-line is you just hate having flat, hair what your hair has become, flat, however there is nothing you can do about it because the texture of your hair has changed forever.
The only way to get the "hair of your dreams" is to cut off the relaxed hair and grow out a new head of hair, a healthy head of hair.
Or maybe you would be indifferent. You wouldn't have been able to take care of the curls any longer and though you hate the way your hair looked, everything is easier now, at least for the next about six week until you've grown another inch of hair, that needs to be relaxed because having hair that is of two different textures is both "ratchet" and unnatural. Oh yeah and all the hair that you worked so hard to grow and then promptly killed with relaxer will probably fall out because your hair is ratchet and unnatural. Why is the bottom of your hair heavier than the top of it? You're so caught up in the process of relaxing that you do it anyways.
I guess ultimately we don't fall in love or relax our hair just so that we can get burnt or hurt. We do it so that we can have straighter hair that is easier to maintain or because we genially care about another person and their feelings as well as our own. Or maybe that's why people love, I really don't know.
Honestly I've never loved anyone who wasn't related to me or a close friend of mine. I've experienced just about every kind of love except that kind that you feel for someone one in an erotic way I guess.
Although Terence and I have been in a relationship for almost six months, I don't know if I love him, I don't even know if he loves me. That's ok however, most people don't know it for years and we are still young.
My mother always said that now was the time to focus on my future. My grandmother always said, "We did not send you to school to date boys! We sent you to school to read your book! Are you reading your book in his eyes?!"
I really do try to focus on my work, in a way she's right.
I have to go to university and in order to go to university and I need a scholarship and they don't just hand those out. You have to earn them.
I looked at myself in the mirror. I'm not vain; I just do that a lot when I'm at the hair salon. The stylists alternate between what they do and the equipment they use. They had just finished applying the second stage of my relaxer, I had a lot of hair so it wasn't completely flat, but if they tried to get it any flatter they'd burn me.
I'd been burnt before, it was not pleasant.
I didn't even know I'd been burnt until the man doing my hair started dividing my hair it into sections so that he could flat iron it on it. He really wanted my hair to be flat and straight.
He told me I'd been burnt but I didn't even know what it meant. I was only eleven and at that moment I didn't feel pain, so I disregarded it.
For a week maybe, every time I combed my hair I felt pain. I never wanted to be burnt again, not that I made the effort not to be burnt again. I wasn't, but that was just by good fortune.
The lady who was relaxing my hair left to go attend to another customer. She was the only stylist in the whole salon who I really trusted, but she rarely ever actually did my hair even though I was only coming there for her.
I didn't want to request her because she was the most in demand and I was but a "child" in their eyes. Nobody took children seriously in that salon. If you were a child and you actually had your hair done right away you were very fortunate. It might have been a slow day.
It was first come, first serve for the adults, but for the kids it was adults first. The adults usually weaselled themselves before you even if they came in the middle of your appointment, or rather your session.
They didn't really work according appointments in that salon. Regardless of when you got there you had preference over me. I can understand really. I don't pay for their services, so I guess in exchange for getting lifetime free hair sessions, I was last for everything.
It only angered me when I'd come at 10am and leave at 10pm, especially when I'd only spent half of the time actually doing my hair and the other half waiting as someone who had stolen my time. But whatever, that wasn't happening now.
I'd gotten used to this happening, the lady leaving, I wasn't even shocked. Another lady came to do my hair, she smiled and I smiled back, but I didn't trust her.
I kept telling her that my hair was itching, it really was too, but all she did was spray the area that itched with some sort of hair spray. Eventually she found some sense and took me to get the relaxer washed off.
Not even half way through the washing, I was interrupted because someone else had to wash their hair. She was an adult, of course. She too was relaxing her hair and there was only one sink.
I was removed from the sink and put back in the chair I'd been sitting in with a shower cap on my head. I didn't think what they were doing was safe, but I didn't say anything. Instead I waited; I didn't even try and hide my irritation. I usually did, but I didn't have a good feeling about what was about to happen.
I was seldom to show irritation, but when I did, everyone apologized for the inconvenience and asked me how I was. I always told them that I was tired, but I guess telling someone you wanted everyone (who was qualified, because sometimes bored unqualified people try and do your hair and you're just like "no") to drop what they were doing and start doing your hair so that you can leave before you burn the salon down wasn't something you should share.
It really used to anger me, I also usually when there when I was PMS-ing.
The lady took me to finish the hair wash. As soon as we'd finished I noticed something. I saw some pink contrast against my brown skin. That shade of pink didn't just happen, not with my complexion. I'd been burnt. Not only had I been burnt, but I suspected that it would happen, but did nothing. The lady who burnt me didn't even apologise. She just smiled stupidly and applied hair food to the wound. It stung, but also soothed it at the same time.
The wound didn't hurt, but I still maintain that nobody likes being burned.
Thank you for being patience and please read and vote, I'm very proud of this book.
BTW this is what I imagine Jasmine to look like.
