Africa's Best + The Bump-It

There are a lot of things that can be accomplished simply by doing without any type of previous experience like sky diving or Easy Mac.  However, there is a whole other realm of doings that require professional training.  Unfortunately, I learned the difference between the two when attempting to play beauty shoppe last summer.

My hair is strong, thick, and resilient.  It has a mind of its own and can only be tamed with copious amounts of strong product.  JJ Abram’s Star Trek reboot had just come out, and Zachary Quinto was hot as a dirty open mouth kiss.  He was everywhere doing press, and I was saw his beautiful hair and knew I wanted my head to look like that, but less hipster.  See?

I also contacted the Bosley Medical to see if they could enhance my eyebrows, but they have yet to return any of my calls...

Anyway, my friend said he thought if we used a relaxer, my hair would magically become wispy, flowing locks of Zachary Quinto inspired awesomeness.  So we went to CVS (the start of many a tragic adventure and/or coming of age story and/or cautionary tale).  We navigated through the hair care products and found our way to the ‘Ethnic Hair Care’ section.  And while I had never seen Beyonce or Sarah Jessica Parker endorse it, the sister on the box of ‘Africa’s Best’ seemed happy enough with her do.

As you can imagine… this did not end well.  After 20 minutes of moderate to intense burning sensations, my Zachary Quinto pompadour and ever regaining feeling in my scalp seemed like a thing of the past.

SIDE NOTE: Along with my lesson of 'leave it to the professionals', I learned that if it is made for a specific gender or race, you should probably not use it unless you belong to one of those groups...

After a rinse, my friend and his roommate at the time almost died of uncontrollable laughter.  They tried all they could to try and help me style it.  Blow drying, straightening, cutting certain areas all failed.  Seems for a product labeled ‘relaxer’ it actually just pissed off my hair.  For some reason, callicks (cowlicks?) of unimaginable proportions sprung up ALL OVER MY HEAD. 

I ended up having to shave my head, because this is not a good I can make work:

I never really got my wavy, flowing pompadour I wanted more than World Peace.  But, thanks to a few months of letting hair grow back out and the good people at the As Seen On TV products, I did get a Bump-It!