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Pure ammonia. Moms just couldn't resist messing with our hair. I was 19 when I found out I had thick wavy hair, and got a hair cut at a decent salon. I still have thick wavy hair. Mom didn't need to mess with it.
When I got glasses, in the second grade, she made me get one of those stupid chain things that middle aged ladies wear around their necks to hold them. I didn't need one, and I told her so. She didn't listen. I was nearsighted, so the glasses were either on my face or they were on the night stand within arm's length when I was asleep.
Handdown clothes. She spent money on piece goods and sewing stuff she never sewed up for me. I think she wanted me to look like a dork. I finally got a new, storebought dress, when I was a senior in high school, and had a hissy fit about it. Any thing that was a hand down with a Neiman-Marcus label was good according to her. Yet she spent money on beautiful straw hats she didn't need, leather and alligator purses, and would sneak things she bought into the house, just to sabotage Dad, when she got mad. I was supposed to be a goody goody that didn't play with the other kids. I would leave the house to go play with the kids down the street and that was a cardinal sin.
She would run down the sidewalk screeching my name, with a bamboo switch in her hand, looking like a complete nut. She was a jailer. My friends and I would hide by the side of a house and laugh our butts off. She didn't give me any alternatives as far as kids to play with. I was supposed to stay inside all the time. The trashy kids picked on my anyway. Dad would do the same thing, lumber down the sidewalk with a bamboo switch in his hand like a Papa Bear.
I never learned to swim because we never went to the city pools. Mom didn't want us to get other peoples' cooties.
In the 9th grade, Dad took me to a beauty operator that was a client of his (he was a lawyer). She gave me a Jane Fonda shag like Jane Fonda wore in the movie "Klute". Well, mom was horrified because I was trying to be fashionable. He also took me to a store where I got some striped jeans and some overalls. This was the late 60s/early 70s. Mom was shocked because I wasn't dressed up like a little doll in a dress and looking "feminine". She was always worried about what I wore to parties, and whether or not I was dressed up. I tried to explain to her that in college, nobody wore dresses.
I wore jeans, t shirts and long hair and no makeup and I had plenty of dates with math and physics majors. This infuriated her that I did not dress up like she wanted me to. Every time I went to a party and she would ask me what I wore. I said, "A good pair of jeans and a silk shirt". That pissed her off. No dresses and heels.
I got some bell bottom hip=hugger pants. That was bad. I looked better in those than in the ones she bought me. And she was a fashion and costume design major, and should have known about proportions!! She bought me pants with three inch wide waistbands that came up under my bust, and made me look like a mushroom, because i am short waisted.
She wanted me to wear lipstick in high school. I got some and wore it and every one picked on me that day. I didn't have any dates anyway, so I decided that wearing makeup was a bunch of bullshit. Her idea of makeup was red lipstick. No mascara, no covering up the dark circles under the eyes. No eyebrow pencil. No boys would go out with me because I was smart, at least not in high school.
When I was little I was supposed to look like Shirley Temple, and when I was big I was supposed to look like Joan Crawford.
:puke:
And half my DNA came from this crazy person???? :shrug:
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