I'm not quite sure why I made the sudden decision to stop punishing my hair, but I remember very well what lead up to it. The summer of '98 was good to me. I was visiting the hairdresser every 9 weeks for the 4 hour long Optimum relaxer hair session. With snacks, newspaper and cell phone stuffed neatly into my bag, I was prepared to spend as long as necessary waiting for my favourite beautician to get around to getting rid of my nasty embarrassing nappy roots. Hey, I might even go out to the club tonight I�d have a fresh, shiny, just come out of the beauty salon looking straight head of hair. Because my hair was growing like wild it was time to ruin it, I had to have color, it had to be red. I wasn�t gonna pay at least $60 for my favourite hairdresser to put the color on for me, Yeah, I liked her, but not that much! I�d messed with my hair before, it hadn�t always been successful, but this time, this time would be different. I mean, how wrong could you go with a semi-permanent color? The first application of red was not quite red enough, maybe it did look red when I went out into the summer sun, but hey, why settle, I wanted everybody to see that brilliant red even when dark, just like in the magazines. So the following week I colored it again, and left the red on for one hour, and threw a plastic cap on it, for good measure,you know, so the color would really take. Well, the only thing it really took, was my hair! I ran to my favourite hairdresser almost in tears. "Cut it", she said, "can�t you save it"? I argued, "well we could try" she said unconvincingly. So I spent double my usual amount and got a good deep treatment, just as she recommended. I was desperate. During the next few weeks I was still losing hair left, right and center. Braids, I thought, that always works. After 4 months of sporting braids the damage had long been done, I had to come to terms with the fact that I had ruined my hair and the bad hair had to go. In January 1999 I made the appointment, packed my snacks, newspaper and cellphone neatly in by bag and with sunken shoulders and head down eased into her chair, I felt like samson, all my strength cut clean away as my favourite hairdresser cut my hair down to 1 inch. I was left with a plastered down style / look kinda thing (I had to beg for 2 inches to be left at the front). My favourite hairdresser made an appointment for me to come back in another month for another serious double the price treatment. As the date grew nearer, I grew tired. Tired of the hairscapades, tired of the trials and tribulations, tired of 21 years of relaxer, wet look, another relaxer, a jerry curl, then a product that promised you could go from curly to straight to back to curly all within 1 hour, a relaxer, another a jerry curl that �didn�t take� which I had to go through embarrassingly for 4 months, then back to a relaxer. Bear in mind, in between all this hair torture I was braiding and putting in a weave in here and there. There, I�ve said it, I messed with my hair til my hair said enough �now it�s my turn to mess with you� and let me tell you, I did not like it, not for a minute!