Outwit, outplay, outlast

I just cannot help myself.  Even despite and sometimes during all the trials and challenges my family and I have walked through, contagious laughter just comes bubbling forth from deep within my soul and like a fourth grade baking soda and vinegar volcano it comes spewing out.  One of those moments occurred last spring when I was speaker at a local mom’s conference.  I had a busy evening as I gave three different breakout session talks, which I assure you was not the funny part.  Oh there were moments of levity in those sessions too, but the big laughter came while listening to the main speaker, Holly Hoffman.  She is an absolute delight to listen to, and her story is very compelling.  Most in the world are probably like me, a kind skeptic, when it comes to television reality shows, but after hearing her story of making it almost to the end on Survivor I now know the players really do live off the land, even if prime footage of personal interactions is all that makes its way to our television screens.

Photo from CBS

While Holly (she is just that sweet that I feel comfortable using her first name) regaled us with the tale of her times in Nicaragua, much like shaking a sealed Coca-Cola bottle I could feel the laughter bubbles start to rise.  I held it together through her talk (Thank the Lord, because that would have been just plain awful), but the moment I got into the room where I was to be presenting I lost it, laughing so hard tears were running down my cheeks.

One of my life’s mottos is to never take myself too seriously and in that moment in a high school classroom, I was doing a fine job of living out that sentiment.  What, you might ask, had me so tickled?  Well in short, my hair!  What in the mayonnaise does my hair have to do with making it to the top three or four on Survivor?  After listening to Holly’s story, I realized fifteen minutes into it that I would never be a candidate for the game of survival, because my hair would outwit, outplay, and outlast everything else on that show.

My standard response to anyone who compliments my hair is a shocked, thank you, often followed by a “well it only took three hours this time”.  Most people have stylists (or if you are of a different age – beauticians). Nope, not me.  I have a hairgician . . . because just the normal mojo would not work to tame my hair.  At some point during the pregnancy of my third child, my hair took on a life of its own transforming from very, very slightly wavy to two kinds of mane crazy.  Unlike the famed mullet from my high school years with business up front and party in the back, my two kinds of crazy more resemble some of the finest candidates from the Westminster Dog Show.  The top layer resembles the waves behind a Golden Retriever’s ears, while the layers underneath are full on poodle . . . and that is with product.  Without the magic of the hairgician and heaven forbid left in the wiles of the humid jungle, I am guessing the best case scenario would be crazy hair day and worst case, force me to channel my inner Rosanna Rosannadanna.

This is often my look in the mornings. Photo from NBC

There are plenty of people who think I am a pillar of strength and would be an ideal candidate for the Survivor cast.  These well-intentioned souls might even try to persuade me that there might still be a chance because every Survivor player is provided a Buff.  Don’t know what a Buff is?  It is the thingamajig tubular headgear Holly is donning above.  But even then, this type of thinking would be flat out wrong oh so misguided.

Long before Buff rose in fame, I tried baseball caps.  Without putting my hair in a ponytail, I easily pass as a doppelganger for Wayne Campbell from Wayne’s World.  Even though deep in my heart, I knew the chance of success was dismal, I desired to be like the funky hipsters and purchased a Buff for myself. Let’s just say after attempting that experiment, I would have great success wrestling an octopus if that scenario ever pops up in the future.

Party on, Wayne! Excellent . . . not really when this is your hair. Photo from NBC.

So while Holly’s talk did answer the proverbial question as to whether the players are really fighting to survive, her story did me a much larger service, cementing that I would never, not now, not ever be a candidate for Survivor.  Some executives might want to capitalize on Tune in next week to see the Survivor adventure . . . with Kandy’s hair. I highly doubt that would generate any real boost in ratings, but who knows it might be empowering for women worldwide to know that perhaps their hair woes aren’t really as bad as they think.  I, however, don’t believe I’m made of the right stuff to live through the shame of t-shirts and memes describing each episode of my colossal hair failure.

My real hair (with no product)

If you were to ask my children, they would tell you my reticence to apply is that the show’s producers would never give me enough ice for my sweet tea, but that is a story for  another day. Trust me, though, it’s really all about the hair.

Go ahead. Laugh.  I do, even at my own expense,  because laughter is good for the soul. Even though this is the hair God gave me, laughing saves me from tears because of my crazy hair adventures.

Happy Friday, y’all!  Hug your kids! And, never take yourself too seriously,