Today I’m getting my hair straightened. Yes, this girl who is so pale that the glare off her skin blinds small children, needs to make her hair calm the hell down. For those of you who haven’t met me in person, I don’t have curly locks that are wayward and unruly. I have VERY thick, straight hair that can frizz and look like a mushroom on top of my shoulders. I didn’t inherit my mother’s Sicilian skin tone or hair texture.

When I was getting my hair cut and colored last weekend, my stylist, Annabelle, suggested the straightening idea as she listened to my lament about my hair overwhelming my face. Even though my hair is in a chin-length bob, sometimes I feel like a weird cross between Cousin Itt from The Addams Family and Gilda Radner’s character from Saturday Night Live, Roseanne Roseannadanna.

I’m hoping this treatment works because I really like my hairstyle a lot. In the past, in order to avoid the mushroom cloud, my hair had to be past my shoulders so the weight of it deflated the mushroom. Think feathered, brunette Farrah hair and you’ll know what my prom pictures looked like in the early 80s. I don’t want to grow my hair longer because (a) After 45, long hair usually makes you look older; and (b) It’s too much work and I have the patience of a gnat on crack.

The other option is to cut it short. I had short hair from the 1990s until a couple of years ago. It’s easy and cute and I may go back to it someday. But, there’s something about a chin-length bob that I like. Maybe it’s the sleek, sexy quality of the cut. What girl doesn’t like sleek and sexy, right?

In life, we all have to make the best of what we have. We play up our best features and play down our less desirable ones. I will never be tall and have legs that seem to go on for days. But I do have good hair that just needs a little taming, that’s all. Wait. I now have the image of my stylist with a whip in one hand and a chair in the other taming my mane. Oy.