I'm thankful to have been poor. Among other benefits, this past allows me to:
- look at my stupefyingly stupid job and feel very fortunate, indeed
- listen to my peers' material angst and think they're spoiled, whiny bitches
- not fear being poor again
- look at my friends' kids' mountains of long-forgotten toys and hate the kids truly, madly, deeply. You know what I owned when I was five? Half of a lincoln log set and a stuffed chimpanzee named Schnickelfritz. I was his fifth kid. That's it. That's the list.
But perhaps the best part of having been po' is stories like the following.
Maddie wanted a perm, but we couldn't remotely afford it. A perm for hair the length of her beautiful brown locks ran something like $100. One of us—which is to say, me—hatched the inevitable scheme to buy a $20 home perm kit and have me administer the perm. Not only would it save the $80, but if I didn't waste the chemicals, we could get two or three perms out of that kit.
Reading the instructions on the box, I combed the perm solution into her hair. All of her hair. And then I began the process of wrapping her locks in curlers.
"Huh. This is harder than it looks."
30 minutes later, with me having successfully curled exactly two locks, Maddie was in a full-tilt panic.
"PICK UP THE PACE! IT'S SETTING!"
And so I picked up the pace, whirling her locks willy-nilly around the remaining curlers like I was collecting sting around a cardboard tube.
The lessons here, kids, are two: 1) if you're doing a home perm, only put solution in the hair you'll be able to do something with later that same day, and 2) don't ever, under any circumstances, do home perms.
Two of the locks ended up looking looked pretty good. The other dozens were an odd combination of frizzy poodle, giant corkscrew, and Verdine White, the bass player from Earth, Wind & Fire. Mostly the latter. I tried to emphasize the two good locks. Maddie, ever the Negative Nelly, emphasized the Verdine locks.
She eventually forgave me, but she did have to shell out the $100 to try to fix my handiwork, then another $40 to cut it all off.
"Why on earth did she lop off all her beautiful hair?" my buddy asked. "It was her best feature!"
"Stupidity," I snorted, shaking my head disapprovingly, not specifying whose.