Collected notes on perception

I've jotted a few notes down here and there about the perception-altering qualities of dreadlocks.  Here's what I've got:

• A friend of mine picked up my metal comb and asked me what it was for.  I told him, "That's how we put in my locks," and he froze for second, as if I had said, "That's how I cut open live kittens."  I don't think he noticed that I noticed.
• The right side of my head - the nurture side - had a serious itching fit when I was out in the cold today.  Don't know what it means.
• Is there such a thing as dreadlock assault?  Two people have told me tales about unconscious people getting dreadlocks put in without their consent.  In both cases the tale teller didn't know the alleged victim directly.
• Having dreadlocks myself doesn't keep me from wondering if someone else's locks are clean.  There's no easy way to tell, not visually.
• Only after I started locks did I have strangers compliment my hair.
• I got a pretty bad eye infection a month or so ago, and I wondered if I'd scratched my eye on a lock.  They're every bit as annoying as unlocked hair is at this length, with the added features of bludgeoning mass and a cruel, spike-like tip of hair that's been deliberated roughened up for extra abrasive locking power.

Perception is subtly changed by this hair.  Some of that perception is mine, but not all, and it's usually hard to quantify it, but it's there.

Metathought ramble about dreadlocks

File under slow feedback:  a friend told me this week that my locks look much better than when I started them.  "They looked horrible," she said.

That is the tricky thing about perception in the early 21st century.  Nobody-but-nobody was afraid to treat blacks poorly when Black Like Me was being written, but now we're much more subtle about how we treat people.  We can't judge a book by its cover . . . or admit to it, anyway.

You can get a little paranoid about this stuff.  You look for non-verbal cues that suggest they're distracted by the hair, but it's harder to find clues that someone is negatively impacted by it.

What I don't want to do is get sucked up into a thoughtcrime cycle - some of the most egregious examples of racism are (over)reactions to a perceived racist threat from whites.  Can't they see that they're inciting this, I rant as I'm following the news.

Well, maybe they can't.

If I allow myself to think about it (which is pretty much when I'm blogging, but rarely else), I can definitely see the difference in how people treat me.  The friend who said, "People won't take you seriously," meant, "I won't take you seriously."  The man who suggested I don't hide them during my political campaign is treating them more like a scandal to be managed than a personal style choice.  The friend who just told me how bad she thought they looked felt that way for months, and probably still does.

Or does she?

When I don't plug my hair into the analysis, I find that I remain as I always was - sometimes puzzled by how people act.  It makes us feel safer if we know what motivates other people.  Since we can never be sure, it's much easier to just ascribe a motivation of our choice.  If the one you pick doesn't feel very sensible, give it time:  you'll find plenty of evidence of your theory once you're thinking about it.

Thing is, I can walk around expecting people to treat me differently because I have dreadlocks, or not.  Whether I do or not, some number is going to discriminate in some way because of my hair.  Others will not.  At the end of the day, I can be all pissed off about how I was treated, or I can not even remember it.

If I go looking for a fight, I'm sure to find it.  If I don't, one might find me anyway.  The former keeps me stress-free and positive, but the latter will probably give me more to write about.

I will never possess sufficient curiosity to write a convincing fight scene.

Reason #9: dreadlocks teach approachability

Dreadlocks, without a doubt, make me more approachable.

Say what?

It's true, but it's counter-intuitive.  At first glance, they're messy, disheveled, and unkempt, particularly when they're first getting started, so I wasn't prepared for them opening doors.

But what I've discovered is that people will talk to me about my locks; they act like a kind of ambassador, allowing people who have some experience with them to start up a conversation.  I don't think it helps me talk to people who have no experience with locks, but that's why I want to keep them neat and professional anyway.

• People who used to have them, like the village board member I ran into one day who told me about how her life was very different back then.
• Or people who are just starting out kinda small and subtle, like the mom I know who put one (just one) in behind her ear.
• Then there's folks I've been introduced to specifically because I have dreadlocks, like the local Republican who had them for twenty years.

I wouldn't have known that any of these people have, or have had, locks had I not had them myself.  (Yep, I used that word five times in one form or another.)  I call that approachable.

Professional engagement

Summer has driven me to take the risk that I knew it would - I abandoned my favorite hat the other night.  I had work to do in public, but it was time.  It's a well-made knit cap, and it's not made for hot weather.  I tried getting a hair net, but no matter what you make a hair net out of, it's still a hair net.

My tour of duty was a planning board meeting where I am known, and no one remarked on my hair.  I doubt they're breathless readers of my blog here.  I watched during the meeting and afterwards, when I asked some follow-up questions for my article, for any non-verbal cures, things like

• eyes drifting upwards to look at the hair, or
• a faint nasal twang to suggest not breathing through the nose, or
• a closed body posture, arms folded and turned away.

I saw no reaction from planning board members, applicants, or other journalists.  Well okay, the one applicant kept looking at me, but I couldn't tell if it was the hair or my journalist pad.  I get the latter anyway.

The following day I spoke to a number of local officials including the county executive, and attended a political committee meeting where I participated in candidate interviews.  My appearance doesn't seem to impact people who expect me to work in a professional manner.

Not sure what it means, but it's interesting.

Reason #6: accountability

I had someone offer me a hit off a blunt one day, and I declined.

"Let me get this straight," he said to me.  "You get dreadlocks and you don't smoke weed?"

I've been told that dreadlocks can increase offers of drugs.  It's something that's just expected of people with locks.

I can't afford that, because sometimes I'm not the most mindful driver in the world.  If I get pulled over with a natty head, I'm pretty sure that the cop is going to find probable cause to search my vehicle if I can.

That's why dreadlocks make me accountable.

• I need to understand and exercise my rights.
• I need to practice one crime at a time - and realize that having dreadlocks might count at that crime.
• I must be prepared to go the extra mile to appear clean and neat, because the people who think I'm not may have influence over my life.

So please don't be surprised if I don't take a hit off your blunt.  I need to rise above and be something which people don't expect.

I'm accountable to myself.

Getting testy

It's been over two months now, and I don't know if I'm going to get any serious crap about my hair or not.

The challenge is trying to test reactions, without creating them.  For example, I've gotten comments suggesting that my police encounter really wasn't influenced by my hair.  I could have pushed the issue, and escalated it into a confrontation, but I don't think that would have shown anything about the officer's perception being altered by my locks.  My only reason to speculate was independent musings, plus a desire to attribute his rude behavior to some external factor, rather than presume that he treats everybody like that.

It's hard enough to pinpoint cases of racial profiling and other forms of discrimination; you can suspect, but it's not easy to know.  In order to do a solid job testing this hypothesis, I need to understand what has - and has not - worked while studying racism.  There's a professor of African American studies that I might look up to ask about that.

More questions than answers.  That's actually a good thing, even though it's frustrating.

But officer, I said . . .

I had a police encounter recently that I believe was negatively impacted by my locks.

First, a few words about my relationship with, and opinion of, police in general.  I like knowing that there are people who are willing to do very dangerous things to keep other people safe from crime.  It's an important role of government:  protecting the minority (in this case, potential crime victims) from the predations of others.  I have a rapport with a number of local officers, and I respect the work they do.  When it's possible, I enjoy watching their operations because I don't have any training in police procedure, and I find it pretty interesting.

On the other hand, police are trained to push the envelope, encouraging people to give up their rights.  It's legal, and many people out of ignorance do so on a regular basis.  Another reason I like to observe the police is because I want to understand better how, and how often, they get people to yield their rights to things like silence and protection from search and seizure.

So I observe police activity when it's convenient, both for my personal curiosity and because I'm a journalist.  I know people who observe and record police activity in the hope of catching cops doing something wrong, and there are people who contrive to create situations to make police look bad.  I don't have an agenda, other than to observe what's going on.

So in this particular case I had noticed an extremely intoxicated young man stumbling around the bar district of my town.  Not too long after that, he found himself passed out against a dumpster, covered in his own vomit.  Someone had the good sense to call 911; the man was probably in very real danger at that point.

When I came upon the scene, two rescue vehicles and two police officers had already responded.  There was ample room for their vehicles, as the man had passed out in the corner of a parking lot.  Most spots were filled, but the emergency responders parked in the aisles, as they are wont to do in such cases.

I maintained myself some twenty feet from the action, taking care not to get into the line of sight between the victim and any of the rescue vehicles.  I don't interfere with police and emergency activity.  I wasn't able to see the victim, but I was more interested in the police, so this didn't trouble me.

Not being able to see much, I was texting a friend from my extremely dumb phone while observing.  The way I held my phone piqued the interest of an officer, who broke away from the scene to approach me.

"He doesn't need to be embarrassed more than he is," he began, "and doesn't need to be recorded.  Why don't you step over there," he said, gesturing to a spot some 30 feet farther away.

"But officer," I began, wishing to explain that I wasn't recording.

"Sir, I asked you nicely," he said in a tone which was anything but.  "Please step over there."

I knew that I wasn't breaking any laws.  I knew that he was implying that he would find one to claim I was breaking from his bearing and tone, should I disobey.  I didn't have an ax to grind, so I obeyed.  But I knew full well that my rights had been violated.

Recently waxed, wild dreadlocks

I later confirmed that, despite my being somewhat well-known in my community, the incident was not driven by personality.  He didn't know who I was, and I didn't choose to push the issue by flashing my press ID or otherwise escalating.

I have found no credible evidence, before or since, that local police target recording of their activities and discourage it.  Some anecdotes, but nothing I can verify.  That being the case, I have a very strong suspicion that my locks altered the officer's perception, and put me on the "cop radar" as a possible problem when he may have otherwise not reached that conclusion.

The hypothesis that dreadlocks impact police encounters in a negative fashion seems a lot more valid to me now.  I had expected that I wouldn't discover anything about this question unless and until I made an error in driving (which, frankly, is bound to happen; I'm not an angel behind the wheel).  To have such an encounter while merely texting near police activity caught me entirely off-guard, but was nevertheless very instructive.

A tangled web

Dreadfully dapper.

Running for office has forced me to step up my look.  My original premise, that writers are largely immune to judgments based on their appearance, is completely the opposite of politics, where votes can be won or lost based on looks alone.

When I attended the Ulster County Republican Convention, one gentleman, upon seeing me wearing my tam, asked if I were perhaps Jamaican.  Now that I've worn the thing, I have to agree that they look a bit ridiculous . . . very poofy and visually distracting.

So I'm stepping up my game.  I've taken off my Groucho glasses, so to speak, by shaving the mustache and replacing the glasses with contacts.  I stepped into Blue Byrd's Haberdashery to get advice on a better hat and, together with a thoughtful customer who told me that the cocoanut weave fedora brings out my eyes, we found one that I think works quite well.

This political game isn't what I had in mind when I began to lock my hair, but I don't doubt that it will draw out the positive and negative perceptions about the style.  I've had no less than three people suggest that I should get rid of them if I'm serious about running for office, but I have a prior commitment to my hair:  five years unless I run into some kind of icky hygiene issue.  I'm willing to serve, but I'm first and foremost a student of life, and I'm going to learn about campaigning in the context of learning about dreadlocks, and I'm just going to have to find ways to convince people to focus on my ideas, rather than my hair.

There's absolutely nothing to be lost by maintaining a professional and classy appearance, though.

Notes from a Dreaded Republican

I started this blog to chronicle my journey to understanding about dreadlocks:  why people get them, why they keep them, their advantages and disadvantages.  I named it "Dread Like Me" in the spirit of Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin's groundbreaking book about how a white man learned what it was like to be black in the South in the 1950s.  I expected that people would start to look at me differently (or want to take pictures of the back of my head).

People are looking at me differently - but not at all in the way I'd expect.

In my little village, we've got hippies, musicians, academics, activists, environmentalists; overall it's a very engaged community which has shifted in the last twenty years from a Republican stronghold to a Democratic bastion. I've been one of the few Republicans for several years, holding to the belief that the truly core Republican principles (personal responsibility, fiscal responsibility, a nation governed by laws) can exist without hatred, bigotry, and cruelty.

Posing with the plane my father worked on.

If anything, I expected that my dreadlocks would lead me to be completely dismissed by the party faithful, but instead, they asked me to run for Ulster County Legislature.

I can now see the wisdom of their choice.  It's been a long time since trust-buster Teddy Roosevelt created the first national park, and a lot of intelligent people dismiss the idea that a Republican can actually care about real people anymore.  Wearing my locks, I send a clear message:  think again. Because I look so very different, closed minds open up a little bit, and I can actually share my ideas.

Ideas like taking the green-collar economy seriously for a change.  Better-paying jobs with an environmental focus can reduce the 7.7% unemployment rate in the county, even while preserving the pristine beauty which drives tourism.

Ideas like taking care of veterans, senior citizens, and kids, because it's the right thing to do. My father was a veteran, and he was ashamed at how poorly his combat brethren were treated.  Aging is the universal equalizer, and sidelining people once their bodies and minds begin to fail isn't a value I embrace.  Children are literally our future, and we relegate them to the crumbs after we pay for other programs.

Not all Republicans are scary, but some of them are definitely dreaded.

Picture this

Top-down self pic, dreadlocks at seven weeks

Getting pictures of my locks is a bit of a pain in the rear.  There are really only two options for getting pictures of oneself, of course:  pointing a camera at your own face, or having someone else them for you.  Pretty simple, I suppose.

Except . . . when I ask someone to take a picture of me, that tend to focus on the back of my head. Call me strange, but I think the front is more my speed.  I understand, there's some interesting stuff going on back there, but I happen to think that endless pics of the back of me 'ead is a bit boring.

Even though I'm locking my hair, the focus of my life (or this blog) isn't having dreaded hair.  Instead, it's about how the dreadlocks impact my life, how they change me and how people see me.

My other alternative, taking them myself, is limiting.  The length of my arm is the biggest factor, because I can't change that.  Clever use of mirrors and better aim definitely help.

Any pics can show you things you can't always see about yourself.  For example, I just found out by looking at this post's image that I have a part in my hair, which I think is pretty funny.

So rather than tell my friends what to take pictures of, I've got a plan that should get me in front of more cameras in general.  Update coming soon.

Oh, the craziness of me

This post's title is inspired by Peter Pan ("Oh, the cleverness of me!") because I've discovered that sleeping can be hazardous to your locks, or at least it can ruin any chances of keeping them tame.  If J.M. Barrie had thought of dreadlocks, he definitely would have put them on his young hero.

Not what I would call a professional look.

The three locks which were sticking straight out from the right side of my head when I awoke yesterday morning were particularly amazing.  As they've gotten longer, I thought at first that it was the rubber bands I still have at the base of each lock which was make those particular ones so . . . pointy.  But that's not the case, because I've moved the bands around, and removed them entirely, and yet I still often wake up in this amazing condition.

The only thing I found that brought them back in line with gravity was a good, long soak in the tub.  They stayed down when I dried them, and they were still down this morning when I woke up.  This is technically a "wax on" week, but wax didn't help me beat them into shape.  In fact, there's no detectable wax in the unruly locks right now, and yet they're behaving.

This brings to mind another reaction to my locks.  "When you go in the pool, you'll look like Predator," I was told.  I imagined he meant how my hair would float in the water, but . . . not quite.  "When you get out of the water, your hair is dry," he said, which is completely the opposite of my experience so far, but maybe it will turn out that way once they're tight enough to repel moisture.

If that happens, though, washing is going to be a real pain in the ass.

Promises made, promises broken

Three weeks, three days in, and there are a couple of things that I've backpedaled on.

• Waxing.  I had been thinking about cutting out the wax in my locks, but I changed my mind.  There were a few factors that swayed me.
1. I started a program, so I should follow through.  The wax controversy gave me pause, but my hair's making progress.
2. I'm getting feedback suggesting that it's locking up fast, so apparently I'm doing something right.
3. I spoke to a local business owner who used to have locks, and he used wax as well.
• Outing.  I was consider giving a talk to my business networking group which would tie together my writing and my hair, but I didn't think my locks were quite ready for prime time, and I opted to talk about poison ivy instead. When I make the shift in their consciousness from "the business writer who always wears a hat" to "that guy with dreads," I don't want them to take away ideas like messy, wacky, or disheveled.  It's important that I project a professional appearance with dreadlocks, so I want to let them settle in a bit.

I think these are acceptable shifts in strategy. What's wonderful is that I can always change gears again . . . my hair's not going anywhere, and the process is slow enough that I can mold my coif like a bonsai kitten.  My hair is locking up fast enough that I have abandoned my stocking shower cap; although I've got plenty of loose hairs and a couple of locks which are kinda meh, there is definitely improvement every day.  The progress is enough to keep me on the program, but not so fast that I want to start dangling them in every face I encounter.

Of course, I live in a small, strange town.  I now know of not one, but two elected officials who have put a single lock into their hair.  The lock acceptance rate in the rest of the world may vary.

No pictures today.  Instead I will close with a fun little montage video of the day of backcombing.  Have fun!

Out and about

Fifteen days in, and I found the perfect storm for bringing my young locks out in public again:

• It was a (mostly) sunny day
• There was a rock festival at the local college
• My hair needed a chance to air dry

I just rewaxed most of my locks last night, so palmrolling them into a spiky mace-head was a snap.  If you're going to rock a hairstyle, then rock it well, I say.

Keep on dreadin' in the free world!

I felt good about going out in public, because I appraised my dreads last night and found them to be coming along nicely.  I removed the rubber band at the base of each one, because they had all rolled up away from the scalp and I wanted to reposition them anyway.  As I said, there wasn't any wax in most of them, so I was able to check out how much locking was going on in there.  Most of them have good, strong dreading going on in the vicinity of the rubber band, so moving it up closer to the scalp should only help things along.

The hair has already opened up conversations I hadn't had before.  I ran into a local elected official, who told me that she'd once had dreads herself, and showed me the one lock she'd made a few days ago around the back of her head.  (This isn't the first time I've seen a woman sporting a lock or three back there - I think it's some kind of dread mullet, professional in front, party in the back.)  She's got some amount of skill at backcombing, because the one lock was pretty solid.

She was impressed that I've only had them for fifteen days.  We talked about backcombing (she complimented my wife), about wax (she uses it sometimes, mostly for smoothing when she's dressing up, and didn't know that there's a wax controversy), we talked about clockwise rubbing, and she showed me a dread ball that she'd made.  

Some of those concepts - clockwise rubbing and dread balls in particular - I haven't talked much about because they work best when there's little or no wax in there.

• Clockwise rubbing is used to train new hairs to join the existing locks.  Hair follicles have a cycle of growth, followed by dormancy, after which they push out the old hair and start growing a new one.  The clockwise rubbing at the base of the lock catches these new hairs up in the lock.
• Dread balls are used to capture the loose, flyaway hairs (of which I have many) and grow them into a dread.  The idea is to take a few loose hairs that are nearest to one particular lock, and roll the tips together until they form a tangled knot.  That knot, the dread ball, gets crocheted into the lock.

Based on her assessment, I am considering moving on from the "always have wax in your locks" phase to the "every other week" phase.  That calls for alternating a week of dread balls and clockwise rubbing to form knots with a week of waxing to hold them together as they lock.  I'll reassess next time I wash my hair.

Looking inward: learning from my dreads

So far the biggest change in perception that I've seen around my dreadlocks is my own.  The first time I saw someone with dreads was in college, and I couldn't figure out what was going on with that girl's head. My companion said to me, "I know what she's trying to do, but she's not doing it well."  I didn't hear the word "dreadlocks" for years after that, but I still remember the girl who looked like she had mange.  For a long time that's what I thought dreads were all about, but now I know what mature locks look like, and I appreciate them when I see them.

Mind you, I still find myself avoiding talking to people who have cultivated dreadlocks as part of a look of homelessness.  My reaction to dirty, disheveled people isn't any different than it used to be; I just don't automatically pigeonhole someone for having dreads alone.

I'm still able to keep my locks under my hat, and so far I've only had one day when I let my dreads fly free.  The eyes aren't yet on me.

Bigger still is my desire to use dreadlocks as a metaphor for, well, just about everything.  Locks tighten up as they mature, loose hair gets incorporated, and the overall appearance becomes more organized and pleasing to the eye.  At first it's complete chaos, but over time the hair starts to understand its new role, and gets better at it.  I've seen similar evolutions all around me, for example:

• Businesses
• Gardens
• Children
• Politicians
• Movie directors

Much in the world can be advanced through practice and repetition, but some things just take time.  Wearing these young, short locks on my head makes me think about that a lot.  I think the lessons here are deeper than just patience.

One week in: let's talk about waxing dreads

I can't believe that one week ago today my scalp was in agony as we backcombed the hell out of it.  Where are my locks now?  They're in lots of different places:

One week in, professional and stylin' in one slick package

• some are poofy with a wall of hair around a hollow inside
• others are really narrow, closely-packed little spikes of hair
• a couple of them, shorter ones, are really only sticking together because of the rubber bands

which I would call progress, all in all.  There's a halo of loose hair around every lock, and combined with the sprinklings of salt in my pepper they lack visual definition.  On the other hand, they're staying together better, and when I've worn my hat for awhile they're willing to stay down until I palmroll them.

I've been cautious about overwaxing my dreads, and I realized that what I thought was wax was actually the hair starting to lock up, which is a lot faster than I expected.  (The flipside is that they'll probably take a lot longer to mature than I'm expecting, but we'll see about that.)

Waxing dreadlocks is very controversial, it turns out.  I am waxing my locks, but I don't know enough to say that it's the right thing, or a good thing, or the best thing, or the dread thing.

I just don't have wax on lockdown.

Here's a good example of the argument against using wax:

Man, that screen shot is not flattering, is it?

So wax will cause problems like mildew, wax will slow the locking process, "you won't have dreads, you'll just have candles on your head."  That last one's funny.  But hey, I didn't know there was a controversy, and I'm learning by living.  In fact I bought my wax from one of the companies named in that video, although I found my information about using wax elsewhere.

In truth, DreadHeadHQ recommends a very minimal amount of wax in dreads.  I don't think I would need another container, because I'm supposed to use it less and less frequently.  I'm cautious about not adding wax if there's any left, so worst case scenario I've been sold something I don't need, and something to remove it with.

The opposition seems to like videos:

It's passionate, but is it accurate?  Some people believe that anything other than neglect isn't "natty" enough, but I'm going for a more controlled, cultured look; bonsai instead of banyan tree.

I'm going to follow the regimen I'm on, which calls for wax in the locks for the first month, reducing after that.  I already own the wax, so it won't cost me money.  If wax really slows down locking, well my hair likes to knot anyway, and it's been pretty well backcombed, so it's just going to take longer.  If it works, though, I will have smooth, tight locks in two or three months under the best of circumstances.

Either way, one week in I'm continuing to take a laissez-hair attitude about my dreadlocks.  At least when I'm home and no one can see them.

Keeping it under wraps

My plan all along has been to keep my dreads on the down-low, like a business-owner friend of mine who has three locks hidden in the back of her hair.  Since I'm going for the full dread head, though, I'm finding that it's quickly becoming difficult.

Four days in (feels like forty), and a spike in temperatures has made me rethink my favorite hat.  Yesterday saw the mercury pass 80 for the first time this year, and I found my head was incredibly hot after a walk into town with the took on.  All winter I'd taken to wearing the hat at home (even while sleeping) as well as away, but I didn't see the point in that heat.

Today it's much cooler, in the 70s, and my head is on the warm side of comfortable.  The day started out cool and clammy in the house, which I like to counteract with a hot tub soak.  It felt great and completely energized me, so I wanted to run a few errands.  Wet dreads covered become mildewed stinky dreads, so I couldn't wear the hat out unless I waited for the locks to dry.

I had three errands:

Unedited, people look at me like this

1. Deposit checks at the bank
2. Pick up gardening supplies at Agway
3. Pick up a check from a client

The bank's drive-through ATM would be a snap.  I dismissed picking up the check until I could do so with a hat on, because even when I am seen in casual clothes I need to maintain a professional appearance.  This translates into a simple, clean profile, which is something my locks dread doing.  Locks are less flexible than strands of hair, so when they're short they tend to stick up.  The hat is training them to stay down, but when I palmroll them they spring up to attention again.  Nope, I was not picking up that check.

Agway was somewhere in the middle.  I would be out in public, but the onus of professionalism would not be upon me.  In fact, the employee I spoke to was very professional.  I had the feeling that people were looking at me strangely, but it was just my imagination.  Well, except in the parking lot, when the man getting out of the car next to mine allowed his eyes to drift slowly up to the crest at the top of my head.  I made a mental note to remember that driving with dreads could be grounds for being pulled over (now that racial profiling is mostly illegal), and drove cautiously away.

I dreaded this: the cat's out of the bag

Well I mentioned to a friend and business associate that I have plans for my hair, and now the world knows.  The mention included sharing the link to this blog with her on Twitter, and, social networking what it is, seeing it retweeted and posted on Facebook.

Samson, who had "seven locks of hair"

So in truth I'm thinking six people know, and maybe one of them actually knows me.  My secret isn't exactly safe, but it's secure it obscurity.

You may wonder why, if I wish to be private, I would choose to blog about this process on a platform owned by Google.  Or why I wouldn't pick a hobby that's a little bit less visible than transforming my hair into "locks like snakes."

I'm actually not trying to keep it secret (hence telling my social networking diva friend), but I do enjoy watching the process unfold slowly and build momentum.  The more people knowing and reacting the more I will have to write, but I don't want to just announce my intentions on CNN or anything because then it will feel forced, like adding too much buttermilk to the moss garden.

Fun fact:  locking hair makes it shorter, but it has the potential to be much longer than straight hair can be.  This is because it doesn't let the hairs that shed fall away, so the lock length is not limited by the maximum hair length your body can produce.