Was My Face Red!

Share Now

Do you ever do something that makes you feel like a total idiot? I did something like that yesterday morning. Actually (I am embarrassed to admit this), I have done that same thing now for several mornings. It’s just that today I realized it!

I was standing in front of the sink drying my hair and thinking about how I just couldn’t believe how short my hairdryer cord was. Appliance cords have not always been so short, you know. There was time when manufacturers (and their lawyers) trusted us with cords. Not anymore! Now we must have really short cords because we might do something totally idiotic and dangerous–not just idiotic like I did yesterday morning.

As I stood there hardly able to dry my hair because the cord was so short, I thought about how I wanted to show this short cord to Ray and let him also be amazed at its shortness. I even thought about the fact that I had actually bought two of these hairdryers so that I wouldn’t get stuck in that awful situation of my hairdryer dying just as I was getting ready to go somewhere. I thought about how disappointed I was that I was going to have to suffer through another short cord after my current hairdryer goes belly up.

It was about this time that I had a sudden realization: my hairdryer has a retractable cord. All I needed to do was pull it further out. Uh, duh!

When I was about twelve I had a subscription to Calling All Girls, a magazine for girls about that age. Girls wrote in regularly to the feature, “Was My Face Red!” I have always been the kind of girl who could have sent in all kinds of things. Too bad I can’t send this one in now!

You see, this is my first hairdryer with a retractable cord. I’ve been using the regular kind for oh, about, uh, well, you don’t have to know how many years, but ever since I quit using this kind of hairdryer.

Hairdryers of long ago. Courtesy Library of Congress.

I’m not kidding. I really did have a hairdryer like these when I was in high school–back when, just like other girls, I tried to make my hair straight by rolling it up on orange juice cans. Do y’all even know what it means to roll up hair? (Pardon me. I digress.)

My hairdryer didn’t have a chair attached to it or anything. Those were for beauty shops (the forerunners of hair salons). Mine was a portable model. You had to set it on a table and then just sit there under that big weird plastic upside-down bowl-looking thing until your hair got dry. I don’t know what these ladies were doing just sitting there. You were supposed to have a magazine in your hand when you sat under one of those!

Now, mind you, I never dried my hair wearing heels! I’m not that old! And, I certainly didn’t do it in a room with a crystal chandelier (this photo came from the Library of Congress). I was sitting in my bedroom where I had painted the names of my friends on one wall in between flowers and other hippie-like motifs (with my sweet mother’s permission, because she was always one of the coolest mothers around; you can ask my friends!). I was more likely sitting cross-legged on the floor. I’m not sure that I ever dried my hair wearing my pink jeans that I had embroidered my friends names all over or not, but I might have.

Well, anyway. I felt like a complete nincompoop yesterday morning (this is now the second time I have googled nincompoop to be sure I spelled it right in a blog; what does this say about me?). Maybe you have felt like a nincompoop, too . . . sometime . . . maybe once or twice . . . maybe fifteen years ago or something.

Maybe your children feel a bit like nincompoops, too, sometimes. Aren’t you glad you are there to let them know that they aren’t? Or, maybe laugh with them, because we all are a little nincompoopish sometimes!

Just as a father has compassion on his children,
So the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.
For He Himself knows our frame;
He is mindful that we are but dust.
Psalm 103:13-14, NASB

Share Now