Why Wavyscribe?

The other day a reader and good friend of mine asked me, "So why Wavyscribe?" referring to the screen name I use for AOL and various social sites. I've had readers mention it in passing (some were sure it was an homage to gay romance, as in not straight but "wavy"), but until my friend asked I didn't give much thought that people might actually be curious about it. I'm afraid the truth behind it isn't nearly as exciting as some of my readers seem to believe.

It's all about my hair.

Vanity, thy name is Sara. I took my screen name from my hair. Now, lest you think me a narcissistic creature who loves her hair so much she stands in front of the mirror each night, brush in hand delivering a hundred even strokes like a maiden in a castle tower, um…no. My hair and I, we have a love/hate relationship. I love the fact that I still have hair after all the crap I've done to it over the years; hate the fact that I still can't do a darned thing with it after all the coloring, taunting, taming, and teasing. But that still hasn't answered the question about my screen name, so here goes.

For the first twenty-five years of my life, my hair was straight as a stick. We're talking hair that wouldn't hold a curl if you looped it into a swirl and stapled it there. I spent years sleeping on curlers, hot-rolling it, having it permed (God save us from the spiral perms of the 90s), and using every size curling iron known to man trying to get my hair to hold some kind of wave. The perms would last about a month; the curlers about half an hour. No matter what I tried, my hair was going to be straight and that's all there was to that.

Then, about ten years ago, I noticed the texture of my hair beginning to change. At the time, I chalked it up the stress. I had a one-year-old and a three-year-old. Didn't get much more stressful than that. Soon, though, the texture wasn't all that changed. It seems like overnight (though my doctor assures me it was really a process) my hair curled up like Shirley Temple.

For years I was baffled by the phenomenon. And me being the fickle female that I am, I finally had the curls I thought I'd always wanted and now I couldn't do a thing with them. I live in Alabama--land of the 120% humidity--so no matter what I do, my hair is going to frizz like a poodle in clothes dryer. I've tried blow drying it straight, flat ironing it, and dousing it with every product Sally's Beauty Supply has in their arsenal. The minute I step outside this house it's ringlet city.

Took me some time to get to the bottom of it all, but I now know the change in my hair is a by- product of my MS. Seems no part of your system remains untouched, including your hair. I'm doing so well with the disease (in remission, thank you very much) if this is my only side effect, I'll happily deal. Of course, I still threaten to shave my head at least once a week, and I'm a big fan of the ponytail, but at least I got a fun screen name out of it.