The Painful Ponytails Of An 80s Upbringing

And other horrors.

My childhood, in a physical feeling, is the acute temple-area strain of my hair being pulled back into a ponytail tight enough to qualify as a face lift. Until I was about ten, my mother did my hair every morning in the one style I would tolerate. However, if I saw so much as one bump of misshapen or out-of-place hair on my crown disrupting the ponytail’s smoothness, I…