Dread Heads are Made, Not Born

Friday evening finally came.  It ended up being a smaller party than expected.  Di, Trent, and Cuny were the only ones who were there all evening.  My friend Kirsten came for a bit, and one of my visiting teachers came by and helped for half an hour, which pretty much makes her the coolest VT ever.  The first hour (5-6) was mostly spent giving people directions to my place, cooking and eating the pizza, and watching the how to video for the dreads multiple times.  On a side note, I got to eat pizza!  I ordered Papa Murphy's, and when I looked at their ingredient list, I realized I could totally do a cheeseless pizza from them.  So I loaded it up with tomato sauce and veggies, and you know what?  It was delicious.  I'm definitely doing that again.

After growing my hair out my natural color for nine months,
it's finally time to see if I have enough.  

At about six o'clock, the work began.  Because the boys were scared of ruining my hair, the task of sectioning fell entirely on Di.  She is, in fact, the hero of this whole story.  One of the dreadlocks videos I watched online quipped that the idea that you only needed "one good friend" to do your dreads "sounds like a great way to lose one really good friend."  Luckily, Di is a pretty resilient friend.  The sectioning of my hair took and hour and a half, maybe two.  During this time I took a lot of pictures because I was excited and bored and wanted to document the process.  You can check out the facebook album for the complete photographic tour of the evening.

Sectioning?  Isn't that a girl thing?

Early sectioning.  

All that tugging on my hair may have had a detrimental effect on my sanity.

All that tugging on my hair my have had a detrimental effect on HER sanity, too.

After the sectioning, the actual dreading could begin.  First I sprayed my head with the "locking accelerator," which is a mixture of sea salt and yucca extract.  Then Trent and Di got to work.  Cuny provided the music when we weren't watching TV, and he even ran to the grocery store to get a fresh supply of snacks when they were needed.  Trent or Di would have to tell you what it's like to give someone dreads, I saw very little of the process.  But I can tell you that it takes forever.  I can tell you that the people doing it get bored, that their necks and backs start to hurt from hunching over your seemingly endless head.  Trent apparently didn't know that he was going to be helping when he showed up, but he stayed until we finished for the night anyway, cracking jokes and making us laugh.  Putting dreads in is definitely a bonding experience.  We compared it to monkeys grooming each other and girls putting each other's hair in rag curlers at girls camp, only longer.

  

Being the one getting the dreads is probably the easiest role to play, but you want to have some pain killer handy.  It's not that they're pulling on you head that hard, it's just that having two or three people tugging on small sections of your hair over and over and over in two different directions for hours, all over your head, from the small hairs on the back of your neck, to the ones at your temples, will begin to hurt.  Your head will pretty dang sore afterwards.  If the actual backcombing doesn't irritate your scalp enough, there's always the palm rolling, where you grab a dread and roll it back and forth between your hands to tighten and smooth it.  This has to be done to every single one, and I've got about a hundred.

As the hours passed, we talked, Cuny played guitar, we watched Doctor Who, we watched Say Yes to the Dress, we watched several episodes of The IT Crowed, and I ate a lot of oreos.  At around midnight, we decided that this was going to be a longer battle than we had thought, and that we were going to have to stop for the night.  Trent and Di put bands on the top and bottom of each dread (more tugging and pulling), we took a few pictures, and the two saints of friends left.  Di had to drive 45 minutes home, and Trent had come all the way from Park City to help out. They had been there for seven hours.  My head was about half-done.

As for me, I looked at my head, half newly made, fuzzy and waxy dreads, half floppy sections of loose hair. It was definitely time for a bandanna. The bandanna also made it easier to sleep, because it kept the dreads from getting moving around and tugging on my sore head while I slept.  The next morning I got up and carefully waxed and palm rolled all the dreads I had so far.  The night before I'd been too tired to do more than a cursory waxing and rolling, so I spent an hour or so giving each dread some attention.  Then I went rock climbing up the canyon with a few friends, hiding my crazy hair under a bandanna, that most useful of all accessories.

It actually doesn't look too bad.  Praise Bandannas!

After rock climbing, I played some video games.  That's how you know school is over: I have time to play video games.  It'd been months since I so much as played a round of Mario Kart.  After the veg time, I was ready to go for round two.  I drove up to Di's house this time, and she and I settled in to work again.  From about 6:30 to 11:00, she dreaded by herself.  She'd do a few dreads, band them, and then she'd take a quick break while I waxed and rolled them.  Then we'd repeat.  It was actually really good to have hours to just sit and talk about whatever.  Di's been one of my best friends since fifth grade, and it's been years since we got to hang out on a regular basis.  Having her only 45 minutes away means that after 7 years of being hundreds of miles apart, she can come over for Pi Day, I can come over for America's Next Top Model, and we can spend hours putting dreads on my head.  Her cats may actually stand a chance of remembering who I am now.

Around eleven or eleven thirty, when we were getting pretty tired and a little discouraged because there were still twenty dreads or more left to do, Di's housemate Nick came home.  Nick also gets one million awesome points for his help.  He jumped right in, learned fast, and the two of them got the rest done in only an hour.  At 12:30, I started waxing and rolling the final few dreads.  Then, after a grand total of about 13 hours of work by my friends, the dreads were finally done.

They stuck out in all directions, including straight up.  This, plus the late hour, the elation of being finally done, contributed to some strange pictures.  I love my dreads.  They're bizarre, fuzzy, and demanding little dreads.  I need to put in an hour or so of work on them this morning, and when I go to wash them in a day or two, I'll probably need to set aside more than that for maintenance.  They're going to look incredibly dorky for at least a month, goofy for two, and hopefully they'll start to not be embarrassing by the end of the third.  Not only that, but my head is really, really tender today, and palm rolling is going to be an hour long bummer.  But you know something?  I love them anyway.  I'm already proud of them.  I already think that they look awesome.  I don't know if the wonderful friends who spent over a dozen hours on my hair think it's worth it, but I can tell you that at this point, tender head, fuzziness, waxiness, and 13 hours of sitting later, I'd do it all over again without hesitation.  Maybe I'm crazy.  Maybe I'm obsessed.  But I'm happy.

And I've got dreads.