Miami Livin' (Part II)
Well, I’ve told you all about my skin, so now let’s talk about my hair. And let’s face it, when a person has such thick, luxuriant, curly hair as I do, it’s reasonable for one to blog about it. I really only bring it up, because its gotten relatively long again (as can be confirmed by my still-quite-new Florida driver’s license (and, for the record, since I don’t think its been stated out right, I moved to Miami to go back to Graduate school)). It’s actually difficult, I’ve found, over the last decade, to grow your hair long, when its as thick, luxuriant, and curly as mine.
The usual tactic is to wear a baseball cap from the time that the hair starts to get a bit long-ish, and then, one day, several month later, take of the hat to find that your hair is now quite long. In fact, the last time that my hair was short (the now legendary Pete hair-buzzing of ’05), one of the most easily identifiable proximal causes of the hair-discarding was the loss of my Pittsburgh Pirates baseball hat (a rare specimen of durable free stadium giveaways, dating from the early months of PNC Park) at a Thai restaurant in Astoria, Queens. With no hat to keep the hair out of my face (accompanied by an unwillingness to wear a hat that was not a Pittsburgh Pirate’s freebie), the primary cause of hair cutting was too strong to resist.
And this new Southern-Floridian way of life has me once again confronting that cause: a change in water qualities. Leading up to the great Buzz of ’05, I had just moved across town in Boston (switched ends of the Orange Line), and along with that move, came a great change in the mineral-content of the water in the shower. Suddenly, my hair became very difficult to deal with (in the first town-of-residence (Malden), I had taken to washing my hair with a bar of soap, which, in the long run, was probably a bad idea (it made it that much harder, I suppose, to adapt to the different water conditions of the second-town-of-residence (Jamaica Plain))). Without a hat to keep my now-unmanageable hair out of sight and out of mind, buzzing quickly commenced.
Which brings, once again, to the present. The scene: North Miami Beach. The water: I dunno, but my hair is borderline unmanageable (despite having broken down and purchased both a bottle of shampoo and a bottle of conditioner (with matching names) at the Target that is right across the street from my apartment). And I’ve got a PNC Park, Pittsburgh Pirates free hat (a exact clone of the first freebie Buccos hat (it pays to have a relatively large family). But it’s still pretty shitty, right now, to have hair that’s as high maintenance as my thick, curly, luxuriant, nearly shoulder-length hair has become.
But, luckily, for my hair, I planned ahead this time, and shortly before leaving Pittsburgh, for the 23.5 hour U-Haul trip to Miami, buzzed the bottom half of my head, with no attachment on the clippers, leaving me with no choice but to keep my hair growing long until I’ve got enough hair underneath to even consider getting a normal-ish haircut (I give it at least another two months). Of course, my FL driver’s license is officially a “big hair” ID now, but that’s okay – so what if my hair exits the frame on both sides of my head in the picture. Still doesn’t look nearly as bad as my passport photo.
The usual tactic is to wear a baseball cap from the time that the hair starts to get a bit long-ish, and then, one day, several month later, take of the hat to find that your hair is now quite long. In fact, the last time that my hair was short (the now legendary Pete hair-buzzing of ’05), one of the most easily identifiable proximal causes of the hair-discarding was the loss of my Pittsburgh Pirates baseball hat (a rare specimen of durable free stadium giveaways, dating from the early months of PNC Park) at a Thai restaurant in Astoria, Queens. With no hat to keep the hair out of my face (accompanied by an unwillingness to wear a hat that was not a Pittsburgh Pirate’s freebie), the primary cause of hair cutting was too strong to resist.
And this new Southern-Floridian way of life has me once again confronting that cause: a change in water qualities. Leading up to the great Buzz of ’05, I had just moved across town in Boston (switched ends of the Orange Line), and along with that move, came a great change in the mineral-content of the water in the shower. Suddenly, my hair became very difficult to deal with (in the first town-of-residence (Malden), I had taken to washing my hair with a bar of soap, which, in the long run, was probably a bad idea (it made it that much harder, I suppose, to adapt to the different water conditions of the second-town-of-residence (Jamaica Plain))). Without a hat to keep my now-unmanageable hair out of sight and out of mind, buzzing quickly commenced.
Which brings, once again, to the present. The scene: North Miami Beach. The water: I dunno, but my hair is borderline unmanageable (despite having broken down and purchased both a bottle of shampoo and a bottle of conditioner (with matching names) at the Target that is right across the street from my apartment). And I’ve got a PNC Park, Pittsburgh Pirates free hat (a exact clone of the first freebie Buccos hat (it pays to have a relatively large family). But it’s still pretty shitty, right now, to have hair that’s as high maintenance as my thick, curly, luxuriant, nearly shoulder-length hair has become.
But, luckily, for my hair, I planned ahead this time, and shortly before leaving Pittsburgh, for the 23.5 hour U-Haul trip to Miami, buzzed the bottom half of my head, with no attachment on the clippers, leaving me with no choice but to keep my hair growing long until I’ve got enough hair underneath to even consider getting a normal-ish haircut (I give it at least another two months). Of course, my FL driver’s license is officially a “big hair” ID now, but that’s okay – so what if my hair exits the frame on both sides of my head in the picture. Still doesn’t look nearly as bad as my passport photo.
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