Vivid Vintage 80'S

Oh. My. Gawd!  This photo, like, totally reeks of the eighties.  You can practically smell the Rave hairspray and the Ralph Lauren perfume.

Thanks again to Dad for capturing, and sharing,  this rad example of eighties style.  He had a wicked-bodacious model, my sister, to work with.  She shares her, like, totally bitchin' memories in italics below.

I personally don't remember this happening, though I will admit it sounds about right.

Look how good this home perm turned out!  All thanks to time spent as the home gnome!

This is a fabulous showing of 80's bright colors, right down to the matching earrings, as modelled by me, the gorgeous, cute and incredibly helpful youngest daughter. 

"Helpful?" you ask...

Helpful because my sister, who was also dressed up to go out, did the most awful thing to to me.  When we both heard the words, "Hey, come here for a sec!" bellowing from the den, my sister vanished.  She knew our dad had new camera gear and was set up for a round of let's-see-how-this-works. I was not aware of this.  I totally fell for it when she slyly said, "See what he wants real quick. I'm not quite ready teeheehee." and ran out the door. 

This left me to hours of fun-filled posing for pictures when I really wanted to go out with my friends.  I still think I deserve a huge shout-out for being the ever-present model.  We all know how my never-present sister feels about having her picture taken. She's been flipping off photographers for years. Good thing she didn't try that with Dad!

I'll never forget my model days with my dad.  My sister missed out by running away, but who can blame her.  Her hair never looked this good.

Gnome!

While we're on the subject of garden ornaments...

LOOK!  It's a gnome!

Nah!  Not really.  It's just my sister again.  She's the one who noticed her resemblance to a garden gnome.  I completely missed the similarities.

I guess I was distracted by the look in her eyes. I can see she's pissed off. Even all these years later, I can see I'm in deep shit.  Imagine what it was like to experience that look in person! 

We both have similar memories of home perms.  Standing on your toes with your head over the sink.  Cold chemicals being dribbled on each individual curler.  Sitting around with a bag on your head while water and solution dripped down your neck. The smell.  The stinging.   

What my sister doesn't seem to remember is that her hair always looked great after a perm.  In fact, it was her success that convinced me to try a home perm myself.  What I didn't factor in was that we have VERY different hair.  Where she got curls, I got frizz.  It was really, really bad.  I insisted that my ever-patient mom take me to buy a hot oil treatment to try to 'fix' it.  It did not improve things.  Instead, my poor, over-processed hair sucked up all that oil and held on to it.  I had greasy, fried hair for days.

You'd think that would have put me off perms.  Nope.  That's how much I wanted curls.  I just left the perms to the professionals after that.

Salon perms were somewhat better, but at least at home, there wouldn't be too many witnesses to your bag-and-curler headpiece.  Unless, of course, someone snapped a picture and shared it thirty years later for everyone on the interwebs to see.