I like to think that I'm one of those tough cookies who doesn't let anything knock me out. As a kid, I didn't take sick days. The annoyance of a cold in my school-day or even an upset stomach wasn't worth the eminently greater annoyance it would be to try to catch up from a missed day. I was one of THOSE kids.
Then again...as a kid I just didn't get sick that much either. It's still a little funny for me to call off of work or play hooky but this past week Strep throat turned me into a lifeless mess and I just removed myself from my own world for awhile. I showed up at my sister's house and she said to me, "you really like looking sick when you're sick...don't you."

I love those comments that aren't questions when they should be. "don't you."

Point is, my dreads and...well...my person as a whole is a mess.

One of my good friends returned to town for a quick visit and she did the eager once-over that girls tend to do: that little thing we have to do to be more believable when we say "you look great!" or "You got a new haircut!" or any such greetings of flattery. This particular friend is a sweet sweet person so even though she saw me in the thick of my pathetic-ness, she said "oh you look great!" and then very quickly and maybe unthinkingly added "can I...work on your dreads...they're kind of growing out?"

I still like em.
Maybe i'm one of the few who still like em.

Facebook and conversation has indicated that 2 of my 6 dreaded friends have given up and chopped their dreads off. Another 2 of the 6 dreaded have been talking about chopping them off.

We're rare one day, then not the next.
But because of the mess this hairstyle really is to keep up...those of us who stick it out probably will be rare again.

There's a reason why the most common comment to dreads is "I USED TO have dreads once..."

hmmm.

well i'm stickin it out.

diners

Since about September, my Dad and I have been meeting every Monday to hop in his car and drive far enough away to get lost in an unfamiliar town, at which point we will hunt down a completely random diner to eat at and evaluate in my little sketch/journal. We started our little diner-review days when my twin sister moved away and I was left all alone with a disoriented heart, an empty room, and a home-town I was working hard not to resent for its lack of coffee shops and its lack of an airport. It seems travel is my coping mechanism for loneliness but a couple commitments made that look impossible.
So my folks got tired of worrying about my sleep-less, meal-less, dodgey-eyed and pathetic lifestyle, so they stepped in with compromises I've come to love.
Mom and I traveled from coffee shop to coffee shop every Friday and Dad and I went on our diner hunts each Monday.
These little weekly adventures could make a blog of their own one day. (dream big...i know.)

All this is simply to say that I found myself in a random diner in a random town on Monday morning and for the first time in quite awhile I noticed a few head-turns. I cherish these turning heads like trophies. I am, after-all, a reaction-motivated punk of a kid most of the time, despite the adult life I try to look like I'm leading.

As a matter of fact, an entirely different set of events that can most easily be summed up, though not entirely accurately, as "car trouble" landed me in Massillon in the middle of a snow storm last Thursday. I had about a buck 75 and the only places still open included a pawn shop, a bar, and a little Italian Restaurant. I figured a buck 75 couldn't get me anything in a pawn shop, and couldn't get me anything good in a bar, so I tried my luck at the Italian restaurant. I popped in, still wearing my scrubs from work and hoped I looked helpless and pathetic enough to earn me loitering privileges.
"Can I wait for a ride in here? I don't have any money but..."
before I could finish my sentence a young man named Smiley told me to have a seat and "would I like a cup of coffee or hot chocolate, on the house?"
I love meeting strangers like this. I wish I had money to shower on people who make my day in such simple and satisfying ways. But as I said...a buck 75...
I accepted SMiley's kind offer and commenced in a delightful bout of eavesdropping.
"A guy came in here the other day with dread locks that went all the way down to the floor!" I heard Smiley say to a couple sitting just in front of me.

a kid like me loves to know she's started some chatter

I would like to give some major props to Smiley who started his own chatter simply by giving me some free coffee and good conversation.

props Smiley

props parents

friends!

I don't know it happens, but people keep creeping out of the woodwork: people with dreds or people who have considered dreds. Maybe I was being naive when I first got dreds and thought I would be this rare, crazy individual in this county. Although...now that I think about it...most of the dred-heads I've met have been in neighboring counties.

I now know of 2 people in this particular county who have dreds, or have had dreds (myself included.)
I now know 2 people in the county next door who have dreds, one of which I participated in the dreds-making, and 2 people in the neighboring county who used to have dreds.

I visited my sister in Kansas City and there was no creeping out of woodwork there. The dred-heads there are everywhere. It's just another hairstyle there. (Isn't that true?)
but here it still feels like a statement of some kind. (isn't that true too?)

No one mentions them at church anymore.
The woman who used to readjust her grip on her walker in order to brandish a fist at me and threaten to chop my hair off..doesn't do that anymore. The guys who used to ask to touch my hair don't ask anymore either.

things are normalizing.

not sure how i feel about that: statement-maker that i am.

campfire

well, it's been almost 3 months of dreadfulness and I'm still loving it. :)
THere is this new issue i've stumbled into however.

Last evening I enjoyed the first bonfire of the season and now I've got a campfire smell to figure out. Usually I can chase any other odors away by burning incense in my room, but this may be tougher.
I may have to break down and wash those suckers again.
but washing means waxing the dreds afterwards
so that's about half an hour to wash, 2 hours to dry, 45 minutes to wax...

how long does it take you to wash and do your hair?

grandmaaaaaa!!!!

I visited the other Amish country this past weekend to celebrate my grandma's 80th birthday. I was a little amused and maybe somewhat nervous about the trip because I knew it would be grandma's first time seeing my dreds. And I knew she wouldn't like them.

My grandma's a good person. She's not a scrooge of an 80 year-old: certainly not. But she's Mennonite to the core. She's as spiritually wise as Ghandi and as admiring of tradition as Reb Tevye. The mix is actually a fairly splendid one. She's one of my heroes, really. She'd win you're heart, I know it.

My mother had forewarned grandma about my dreds, bless her heart, but I don't think grandma knew what to expect. When I arrived at my uncle's house, he admitted that grandma had warned him "not to react too strongly to Carrie's Guatemalan hair-style." (None of us can figure out where she got the idea that dreds were Guatemalan.) My uncle happens to co-run a coffee shop with all sorts of bohemian-style patrons and he is most definitely not the kind of person who would need a forewarning about seeing his niece in dreds. To be honest, he barely noticed.

Grandma asked me questions about the dreds.
"How did you do that?"
"Well Grandma, the process is actually pretty unglamorous. First you...etc etc"
"How do they come out?"
(This is where someone usually chimes in with the popular suggestion that I'll need to shave my head.)
"Well ya I could cut them all out, grow them all out and gradually cut them away, or get a special kind of conditioner that will help me to comb them out."
"So what will you do next with your hair in a couple months?"
"Oh well I'd like to keep them at least a year and even longer if they'll cooperate..."

This brought a momentary pause to the questions. I don't think she liked that.
Someone else sort of took over the questions and work came up. I explained how I had to wear the dreds up in a pony-tail or braid for work and no sooner had I said this than grandma re-joined by simply saying,
"Wear it in a pony-tail for church tomorrow."

On the one had, I'm a 24 year old adult who had just been told by her grandma how she must do her hair for church.
On the other hand...I'm a 24 year old adult who has dedicated an entire blog to the amusement that comes from getting a reaction out of this hairstyle. I have to admit...I enjoy disapproval as much as I dislike it...

The next day, I did indeed wear my hear up in a braid and grandma turned to me and with sweet honesty she looked at me and said, "Carrie, that looks very nice!"

We were both pleased. :)


I love my grandma.

fall fest

My friend knit me a rasta hat for my dreds and it really has made something click in me. It makes me feel like a character from a book. I pop into coffee shops and stroll down sidewalks feeling as though I'll be remembered as some carefully designed character: just slightly more than a stranger.

This past weekend I felt myself getting restless in this tiny county of mine. My twin sister is a days drive away and I am rendered "individual". Some call it lonely.
What do you do with restlessness? What do you do with loneliness for that matter?

I stuck a sketch-book, my little acer laptop and a borrowed book about road-tripping into my little red backpack and headed out the door for a different place. Somewhere out of Holmes County where I could simply be the girl with the yellow hat and dreds.

Don't let me get away with this independent picture of just painted of myself. The truth is I had my mother pick me up at Java Jo's in downtown Berlin and drop me off at the coffee-shop in Canton. Yes. I hitched a ride with my mother.

The feeling of anonymity I get from going to some other town's coffee shop is a refreshing one. I'm just some girl.

When my mother dropped me off in Berlin, the Harvest Festival parade had just begun. The road was lined with conservative Mennonite families and occasional clusters of tourists. If you grow up in this community, you have no trouble spotting what variety of "conservative" or what variety of "Mennonite" a family may be. Shirts are tucked into straight-leg jeans and denim skirts hang just above flashy white sketchers. The place is full of children who have churches to attend on Sunday and good schools to spend their weekdays in. One day these children may become mothers with the ability to make delicious home-cooked meals or fathers with 9-5 jobs and chairs at the head of the dinner table.

or perhaps one or two of them will become single 20-something bloggers with sketch-books in their backpacks instead of cheerios in their purses or sales reports in their briefcases.

It felt good walking down the road on the heels of the floats just watching people...and being watched.

Am I really that cliche? Am I really just out to be "unique?"

Perhaps this little character I've created for myself is the beginning of a better understanding of something less cliche: something more than getting a reaction.

ah adults

Yesterday someone told me I should take a saw and cut off my hair.


I'm not sure why a saw would be the instrument of choice for such an act.

I said I'd rather not.