Hair
A couple of days ago, in McNamara terminal in Detroit, Fire Child and I were on a quest to find a banana. A couple of movators away from our gate, I heard a voice behind me ask, "How long did it take you to grow your locs?" I turn around, and it's a black woman, about my age, with locs herself. We have a satisfying but too-quick conversation about dreads as we move along the conveyor belts. She's an airline attendant and is on her way to catch her next flight. While we talk, she asks if she can touch my hair. I'm floored because doesn't this usually work the other way around? I oblige and we continue talking. I spy bananas and she needs to continue on, so we part ways. It was the first, real, good conversation I'd had with a black woman about just hair.
There've been a couple of other black women who've become friendly acquaintances who also have dreads, but neither of them has asked to touch my hair. Experiencing that once was a sort of a privilege for me, but I can easily see how I could feel like a circus side-show attraction if it happened with any sort of frequency.
The banana, by the way, was $1.26 and I paid for it with my credit card because I had no American money on me and they wouldn't accept Canadian cash or Canadian debit cards. As soon as the boy ate it, he wanted another one and then threw a fit because I wouldn't go all the way back to the kiosk to get him another $1.26 banana. We had a plane to board.
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There've been a couple of other black women who've become friendly acquaintances who also have dreads, but neither of them has asked to touch my hair. Experiencing that once was a sort of a privilege for me, but I can easily see how I could feel like a circus side-show attraction if it happened with any sort of frequency.
The banana, by the way, was $1.26 and I paid for it with my credit card because I had no American money on me and they wouldn't accept Canadian cash or Canadian debit cards. As soon as the boy ate it, he wanted another one and then threw a fit because I wouldn't go all the way back to the kiosk to get him another $1.26 banana. We had a plane to board.
Original post on Dreamwidth with
comment(s). Please comment there using OpenID.