(This is not me, but it’s kinda what my hair looked like after I melted it)
My mom used to give me Frog Fur perms. Why you would call your perming product “Frog Fur” remains a mystery. But that was moms favorite, I guess.
We sat on the back porch while she put the perm rods in. It was a sunny Seattle morning. Mom squirted stinky perm solution all over my head, and it dripped into my ears. The phone rang. Mom ran in to get it, and I sat and waited. And waited. I went in to see what was up, and could immediately tell that something was wrong. She was whispering into the phone and looked shocked. She hung up, and told me grandpa had cancer.
The next hour was a haze of disbelief as mom told my siblings, and then called her sister. An hour after that, we remembered that the chemicals were still on my head. Mom rinsed me half-assedly and we took the rods out and called it good. We skipped the second chemical process all together. It didn’t seem important.
My hair was straw. Someone told us that henna would help strengthen it (thanks, moms hippie friend, for the advice) It turned my hair green. We tried to dye over it to make it dark brown or something, so I wouldn’t look like swamp thing. It took the color in some spots, but mostly just looked like army camo. It also had turned into texture of overcooked Vietnamese rice noodles. It was officially destroyed.
The next week, Grandma called to tell us that grandpa didn’t have cancer after all! It was just an irresponsible misdiagnosis! hurray! We were relieved. No harm done to human life, just a little false alarm and a ruined head of hair on a devastated 9 year old. 20 years later, Grandpas still alive and kicking!
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