A few days ago I started a conversation with a customer who was playing video poker at my store. He was African American with little tiny locks all over his head. I asked him how he started his dreads and he told me that they were created by his stylist at a salon. I didn't try to give him any advice or vice versa...we just had a conversation where we expressed how we cared for our hair. I didn't ask how often he went in for maintenance but he told me that he doesn't wash his own hair. He said that he lets his stylist handle this because then he doesn't have to worry about how long it takes to dry and that he hates having wet hair. They sit him under the dryers after washing it until it's dry.
My daughter's father loves dreads. It sounds amazing until he admits that he believes the most beautiful dreads are created and maintained in a salon. We had a short fling during which time my daughter was conceived. Pretty quickly we figured out out personalities weren't compatible enough for anything beyond a friendship. Early in my pregnancy he started seeing another woman who also had dreadlocks. She is a black woman who has short and very uniform dreads with the exception of one in the front that is twice the length of all the others.
I don't know what prompted him to tell me...but he said that her locks were much more beautiful than mine because they were uniform and had no stray hair out of place.
What's funny about him making this comment is she told me she was jealous that I had long organic looking dreads that were so soft when you touched them.
Even as we speak he is growing out his hair so that he can have a salon put dreads in for him. Guess my daughter is going to grow up seeing both sides.