A million years ago — long before we bought our AZ house — Jen and I were visiting AZ. We used to take an AZ trip every Presidents’ Day weekend to visit our family. We were either eating or drinking with our brother Dave and talking about getting old. Ha. We were probably in our late 40s, early 50s, which ISN’T OLD. Anyhoo, Dave made Jen and me promise that when we WERE old, we wouldn’t cut our hair short like other old ladies.

We promised, but I’m pretty sure I had my fingers crossed behind my back. The truth is, it probably wasn’t but a few years later that I chopped off my hair and it has mostly been short ever since. He’s not the boss of me.

I’ve never had good hair. It’s just ordinary. My hair is straight as a board, which was popular during my high school days. In my senior photo, my hair is long, parted in the middle, and straight as a Morman. But even back then, it was very fine, which resulted in split ends. Back then, at least, I had quite a bit of hair. Nowadays, I’m waiting to wake up one morning looking like Howie Mandel. I did succumb to the pressure of the 80s and grew my hair longer and rocked a perm. But when the disco age blessedly ended, so did my long hair. Back to a pixie cut.

I’m getting my hair cut next week. It will probably be the last time my current stylist cuts my hair given that I will live 30 minutes from her salon. Wind Crest has a hair salon, which I will give the old school try. If everyone in there is sitting under a hair dryer, I will turn and leave.

That’s a silly notion, however. I keep forgetting that I’m a senior citizen as well, and I don’t sit under a dryer. Probably there are holdouts, mostly among the especially-mature women who live at Wind Crest. But for the most part, people in my general age group have short — and often very cute — haircuts. Spikey hair. Shades of purple amongst the gray. Times, they are a-changin’.

For a period of time in my youth, my mother went to the hair salon almost once a week to get her hair washed and styled. She would come home full of good gossip and hair that was as hard as a helmet. For the next week, she would sleep with toilet paper wrapped around her head. In the morning, she would use one of those plastic hair lifters and coax the hair back into its helmet shape.

I think that period was short-lived, however. And when she died at the young age of 68, her hair wasn’t pixie-short, but not long either. A sensible length. By that time, she had stopped getting her hair colored, though I came across a calendar recently that had been hers and Dad’s. She was still making perm appointments up to the very end.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for me to grow my hair long. It’s getting shorter all the time. My stylist is threatening to use a clipper next time.

Won’t happen.