I haven't colored my hair since the Fall, so I have been pleasantly surprised by the I'm-not-as-gray-as-I-thought-I-was discovery

If I stopped coloring my hair now, I think I might discover the opposite. Sadly.

My hair was never cut until I was 12 and it was knee length. Mother would wash it once a week and it took about a half hour to comb out, while I stood and whimpered. Of course, once she braided it into two pigtails, it was the easiest hair ever, until the next week.

My hair waves when it's damp and goes stick straight when it's dry, except for a couple of cowlicks that stick straight out.

Let us not EVEN speak of what happens to my hair during sex.

I loved the sex scenes in The Big Easy, in which Dennis Quaid catch her hair and she's say "Ouch." Usually movie sex seems to magically do away with awkward body parts.

My mom had bad memories of painful combing and braiding sessions as a child (even though she, like me, has pretty straight hair), so she kept my hair like this mostly:

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When I chose to grow it out myself when I was in junior high I had no idea how to deal with the knots that would form at the back of my neck. Plus I don't think I really used conditioner then. weird.

If I stopped coloring my hair now, I think I might discover the opposite. Sadly.

My hairdresser and I have talked some about letting my gray grow in. She has some process she'd use so that it wouldn't look like progressively bigger grey roots. I'm kind of intrigued about what I'd look like, the grey is pretty extensive now I think. But I'm not ready to take the plunge.

My hair was never cut until I was 12 and it was knee length. Mother would wash it once a week and it took about a half hour to comb out, while I stood and whimpered.

Wow. My hair never got below waist-length, and at that length, it would generally take an hour to comb out. (The length of one China Beach episode. Or Northern Exposure. For some reason, those are the shows that I always remember being on TV while my mom was combing out my hair. Once in a while, it was thirtysomething.)

Plus I don't think I really used conditioner then.

In college I lived with 3 other girls, and I was *stunned* to find that none of them used conditioner. None! And their hair was shiny and healthy.

If I didn't use conditioner (in the shower, rinse out, and then once I'm out of the shower, a spray-on leave-in conditioner), my hair would be unbrushable straw.

I use the Curl Friends leave-in conditioner. It works wonders.

I was *stunned* to find that none of them used conditioner.

As a teen, though, I never used conditioner or moisturizer. For one, my hair was much oilier then, and I guess my face was, too.

Although, oddly, I break out more *now* than I ever did then, which strikes me as wrong and evil and annoying.

I know that I can get my hair to behave nicely like my sister's does. She's taught me how to do it. I just don't have the patience, since it takes a good hour worth of work after each shampoo.

I was *stunned* to find that none of them used conditioner.

As a teen, though, I never used conditioner or moisturizer. For one, my hair was much oilier then, and I guess my face was, too.

I guess conditioner was always about making my hair less tangly, rather than a question of dry vs. oily, because I'm pretty sure my teen hair was oily, too.