There are little eras where curly hair is popular, and others where straight is the thing. Dry and fluffy or oiled and sleek. Short or long, wild or restrained. Humans can become obsessed with hair trends, products, colors.

When I was a kid, the ladies and girls leaned toward curling their hair. There were a number of at-home techniques that were popular. To make pin curls, a damp strand of hair was twirled into a ring and attached to the scalp with two bobby pin that were crossed to hold the curl together. You waited until the hair was dry, removed the pins and voila - a head covered with soft curls. Rollers and curlers were popular (and still are used today). The older models were coiled wires shaped like little cylinsers and covered with stiff netting (or something like that). You wound the damp hair like thread would be wound on a spool. The later models, which are still available today, were lightweight plastic cylinders with tiny teeth or prongs to catch the hair and keep it from slipping off. Bobby pins were used to attach the curlers to the scalp. The little rollers produced loopy curls, similar to the pin curls. The big rollers (in my era, some of us used cardboard lemonade/orange juice cans) paradoxically produced  smooth, straight hair with a little bounce to it.

I don't know if spoolies are still around. They were made of rubbery material - usually pink - and looked like little toy trees with a disk at the bottom, a short stem, and a conical cap. You spooled the hair around the stem and then snapped the cap over the stem and base. To be frank, the pin curls and rollers were fine. The spoolies were entertaining but more effort, and equivocal results. (Curling irons or tongs were around, but they were limited mostly to the beauty parlors.)

As you spun your damp hair in these various ways, many would dip their fingers into sticky gel products - so that the curls would hold their shape longer once dry. Dippity-Do was the gel of the mid-60s. It came in glass jars of dangerous shades of green, pink - and maybe blue or purple goo? The ads ran on TV with frequency matched only by the local car dealers. 'It's Dippity-Do!'

Sleeping with a head full of pin curls or rollers was not uncommon. But - ouch - not a good night's sleep. The verdict was mixed about whether a person should venture outside of the house with the head full of curlers. For some, that was a strict no-no. However, on Saturdays (date night), it wasn't unusual to see teenaged girls out and about with their heads arrayed with the big plastic spools. Older women might be seen at the corner grocery, hair pinned or in curlers, wearing a favorite scarf for cover-up. There was something a little sci-fi-looking about it - and there was something a little vulnerable about it. An act of hope that these repetetive, time-consuming practices would transform one's appearance into something romantic, or exotic, or sophisticated - or just acceptable.

I've had a lot of fun writing this, but why I'm writing this, I haven't a clue.