a dreaded entry

one day my big brother ddwayne just decided to not get hair cuts anymore because he wanted to grow braids. and my other brother kevin soon followed. i always looked up to my brothers for different reasons and that has changed some since i've gotten a little older, but i still look up to them none the less. so seeing that they had braids of course i wanted them too. no matter how many times i tried to grow my hair it always seemed like my mom would make me get it cut. she would say that my hair was too rough and tought to get braided when clearly my brother wayne's hair tends to curl harder than mine. so i took care of my low cut hair and hardly ever had dandruff, even when my skin would get dry spots in the winter i would seldom have dandruff. i had fades and waves for most of my life so it didn't really bother me. i kinda grew my hair the summer before senior year and had a baby fro but i cut it off near the end of first quarter because i had jrotc and i'd play in it and i would look rough and unkempt by the time i got to work. since i was the first thing the customers saw i kinda wanted to keep my image as being a well groomed guy. i went to claflin freshman year and i thought to my self i was pretty grown now and was able to make my own decisions on most things and i got my one of my best friends royce to cut my hair for an honors banquet and i was like that's the last hair cut i'll be getting for a while. and antwan was like "shut that shit up doug, you been said that" (paraphrase). he was joking but he was right. i been tried to grow braids. i wanted braids because they were clean looking and versatile. you could be creative or simple with braids; it was your choice. well, wayne cut half his hair off and got dreaded, and i thought i would look way different with dread and i wanted to try something new. so after growing my lil fro all summer i got dreaded late the monday night before i went to vote for the first time. it was like perfect timing, time for change in more ways than once i suppose. at first i let one of my nephew friends do them and she did a poor job. the one thing she didn't do was damage my hair. but that's as good as it gets. the dreads would come loose withing a week, would be easily washed out when i had to clean my hair. and she would be easily distracted and it once took me 4 and a half hours to get them tightened. so i decided to check out one of wayne's friends and i've been loving it every since. she uses the comb-twist method and they are locking up rappidly.

for me, i'd like my dreads to say first and foremost that i'm a confident individual who isn't afraid to be myself. my dreads remind me of a younger version of my self who looked up to the older males in my family and remind me that i have younger ones looking up to me. if i told you i grew them for a deeply spiritual reason then i'd be lying, if i told you they make me feel closer to my african ancestors then that would be true in a way. there are people all over the globe who locks their hair in different ways and for different reasons and no two people's dreads are the same. something as simple as dread locks crosses all barriers you can think of... age: both young and old people get dreadlocks; sex: men and women choose to lock their hair; race: asian, european, african, austrailian... pick a continent and i guarantee you a person on that continent has dreads for whatever reason. something as simple as dreadlocks reassures me that there is hope that one day people will stop seeing differences and just appreciate each other for what they are worth. anf if they can't do that, then respectively decline to be in each others' company. i'd love to see the day where humans realize that we're all connected in a way.

shots out to vivian alexander, ddwayne james, deryk wilkins, brian means, damien alexander, alex barr (cut his off recently), ronald spurlock jr.... these are the dread heads that i know, soon my homie lebaron will make this list.