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| Me today with the Fro I craved back then |
About forty years ago, I begged for an Afro. With all of her heart my mother tried to style my hair as such. She allowed my hair to hang loose. She wouldn't tease it, that might cause it to tangle. That would be a disaster, especially if she'd have to cut the tangles out. She used a hair "pick" comb and a light spritz of hair spray with the hopes my hair would cooperate and stay in place. Like any other normal day, she sent me off to school.
I remember walking toward Columbian Elementary School--Now George Washington Carver Institute for Science and Technology--in my beloved East Orange New Jersey. I prayed that my pseudo Jr. Angela Davis would sustain the quarter of a mile trek.
In it's most virgin state, my hair was baby fine and drooped to the bottom of my shoulders. My hair would just hang and it rarely held a style, much a less a hip one. I'm not complaining--today--I just wished something short of plastering my hair to a brick with a gallon of hair spray would protect my pseudo Pam Grier from the concrete steered wind.
