Day 325/365 - Freshly Shorn

For this week's self-portrait we have the nape of my neck not long after I'd gotten a haircut. I've been needing one for the past couple weeks, but I had other stuff I wanted to do on a Saturday afternoon so I kept putting off getting an appointment. My hair had gotten pretty wild and woolly in the meantime. When it gets that long it's like having a tumbleweed on your head. Now it's short enough on the sides and back that it will lay flat and the only curly part is on top. It's much easier to deal with when it's this short.

I'm the only person in my immediate family with curly hair. Everyone else's locks are straight as an arrow. I'm not the milkman's kid, though. My maternal grandfather and both uncles on my mom's side had/have curly hair. I used to try and fight it and brush it out straight, but the best I could ever do was get it to be bushy and wavy. Eventually I just gave up and let it be curly.

I started life out as a blond before I wised up and my hair started turning brown :P It's been getting steadily darker ever since about the second grade and now it's damn near black. I never tried dying my hair any funky colors, although I did toy around with the notion of putting a white streak down the side when I was in high school. Then one of my sisters pointed out that if I did I'd look like a skunk, so that put the kibosh on that idea.

For most of the time that I was in the Navy I kept my hair cut in a "high and tight," which means it was shaved on the side and back and there was a patch about the size of a paperback book that was short enough to lay flat on top. That was the easiest haircut in the world to deal with. Didn't even have to comb it. I could just run my hand over the top and I was good to go. After I got out of the Navy, I let my hair grow out and didn't get the back of it cut for over a year just because I could.

Generally I hate having to mess with my hair and from time to time I've mulled over the idea of shaving it off. Problem is, I had it shaved off when I entered boot camp and it turns out that when it is bereft of cover, my head is not very aesthetically pleasing. It sorta bulges out over my ears and there's a dip in the top of it. Basically, it looks like a big fat kidney bean laying on its back. Not the best look in the world.

(Taken with my Nikon Coolpix S200)