Nicole Tasker Woods

I just can’t stand the stuff. I’d rather go out in a snow blizzard then get drenched in the rain. I’d rather be cold&dry than cold&wet. I hated the rain back home in NH and I hate it here in CA.

My worst fear is that my hair-do will get ruined. I had an AWFUL experience with that in high school back in NH. Every day, part of my morning-getting-ready routine was to “do” my hair. It was long and thick and super straight so I attempted to curl my bangs and then plaster them in place with hairspray. Even to this day, it is stick straight (despite sporting a really short hair cut) and as smooth and soft as it was when I was 10, but still I plaster. Anyway, back to the high school story…

…It was a wet spring day, the clouds were out and the rain was falling mercilessly. I hated going outside in the rain, however, I had to in order to get into the main building from my mom’s awesome mini-van. (BTW–didn’t we all ride in one of those at one point or another of our childhood???) For some reason, it wasn’t “cool” to carry an umbrella when in high school. Don’t get me wrong, some people did, but those were the losers. Despite being a nobody, I still tried to at least act cool–or try to not do anything totally stupid that would draw attention to myself, like carrying an umbrella.

So, that rainy spring day I made my way from the mini-van to the main building of my high school while keeping my head as far down as I could without falling over so the rain would hit the back half of my head instead of the front half (where all the hairspray had been focused). From classroom to classroom I strolled in the warm, dry indoors, loving the fact that my head was no longer wet by lunchtime. (Let’s avoid talking about eating lunch in high school–it sucks, no mater who you are or who you sit with…and who you don’t.)

After lunch, the dreadful building change came–for PE (me favorite class–you know I’m lying, right?). The gym for PE was across the street and the masses had to exit the main building, walk to the tunnel that went underneath the street and came out the other side so that a bunch of high schoolers didn’t have to cross a busy street.

As I think about it now, it was probably one of the worst days I experienced in high school. By the time I got from the main building to the gym for PE across the street and in the rain, my hair-sprayed hair was a disaster! The bangs had not only gotten wet, but the rain activated the chemicals in the spray and when the wind blew in my face, the hair got pulled back and then dried into a brand new position–straight up! (Just think Something About Mary–Yeah, it was that bad!) The only way to fix this chemical mess was to take a shower and shampoo it clean, but despite what they say, there’s never enough time to shower after PE in high school, especially not at my high school which was a large campus. Students only got an extra 60 seconds to go through the tunnel to get back to the main building before the next bell rang.

I do not recall how I was able to fix the mess on my head that day, but I do remember being totally embarrassed. I could never just throw my hair up in a loose pony with pretty whispies falling out all over the place like some of the girls. And I definitely couldn’t shellack it back like the other girls. In a daily effort to look cuter than the day before, I got carried away and laid on the hairspray like there was no tomorrow.