The disaster decade - unbeweavable horror stories!

I received so many compliments on my post showing my hair from my first installation, but I think alot of it comes from the fact that you all know where my hair is now. I guess it kinda seems like it all happened over night. But lest anyone think I didn't go through some of the same trials and tribulations they did before discovering SLs, let me set the record straight!

This picture was taken in June 1991. In April of 1991, I made the first of several bad hair decisions. This was around the time when salons were screaming about dry curls. You know, the jheri curls without the juice. I had decided that I was going to get curls so that I could have that wash and wear hair that I had always dreamed about. Of course, since it's a completely different process and one is not compatible with the other, I was going to have to grow out the relaxer before putting in the curl. Since I wasn't one to cut, I had the bright idea that I'd get a weave to transition me through until I had enough length. Could my hair be any bigger??!! People actually thought it was mine and I must say that I did a great job of making sure the tracks were covered and that my hairline blended into the fake stuff.

But it was good in theory, bad in practice. Having the weave put in meant having my hair braided and then having the tracks sewn in. When I went back to the salon after the first weave installation, I found that my braided hair had matted big time. Combing through that mess was a nightmare. But bad as it was, did it stop me from doing it again? Of course not! The hair I got was the wet and wavy and as long as I sat under the dryer to make sure the sewn in tracks were thoroughly dry, I had the wash and wear hair I wanted.


The second picture was taken in November 1991. More weave, but you just don't know what was hiding under there! In September, my dumb impatient self decided that I had enough length on the top to go ahead and have the curl put in and just get a partial weave for some length in the back. OMG!!! as she took the rods out, I could tell I had messed up big time! She spritzed some greasy mess that I had been trying to avoid by getting the dry curl in the first place... and it never did curl right. Over the next couple of days, I had decided that I wasn't putting that crap in my hair. Well guess what? My hair got crispy dry since it wasn't getting any moisturizer. Then it started falling out!!! It was coming out in my hands. Believe me, I cried.

Unfortunately, I couldn't leave my hair like that. I looked like a half plucked chicken with a platypus tail which was the big, thick partial weave that was hanging off the back of my head. I don't think I went to work that week. And no, I do not have a picture of that (at least not one that I'd publish). Not one to leave bad enough alone. I went to a different salon and got another full weave on what was left of my hair.


After that, I saw a friend with the cutest corkscrew braids. I got me some of those too in the spring of 1992. Looked cute on the outside. The remainder of the decade (yes, decade!) was spent trying to recover. My hair eventually grew back in enough to stop wearing a weave in about 1993, although it was never as thick as it was, and it really wasn't very thick to begin with. Then, I got pregnant and my hair loved that! Until after the baby was born in 1994. Then, it seemed like all my hormones shut down and hair started coming out again. By the time I recovered from that, I had another baby in 1997. Here we go again. That brings me up to the first picture in 1998 in my last post, below, and my decision to get SLs in 2000.

I think if I hadn't gone through all of that, I wouldn't have been looking so hard for something that would take me away from all the chemicals and attaching hair that wasn't mine.

Coming next - pictures from the first two years of my SLs.