Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah....Iran

I've mentioned before that when I was in high school I was a part of the institution so lovingly known as show choir. Glee it was not. We had competitions every year in the winter, and if there was one thing that you absolutely did not forget to bring to competitions, it was this: BIG HAIR.

I have very disagreeable hair. I have a ton of hair, but it's very fine in texture, and therefore very limp. It won't hold style, and it is generally content to lie flat against my head with no volume whatsoever. I've tried all the gels, all the mousses, all the different hairbrushes, but it's all for nothing. FLAT HAIR. Not big hair.

This lack of big hair therefore required some serious attention going into these competitions. While the other girls could all slap some hot rollers in their hair an hour before going on stage, apply a generous amount of hairspray, and then be good to go for both performances in the general round and then in the finals, I had no such luck. Competition time required that I borrow perm rollers from my cousin that owned her own hair salon and weigh my head down with said rollers for over 12 hours.

It would work like this: Competitions were on Saturdays. On Fridays after school, we would have a several-hours-long rehearsal, then run through our program for friends and families that came to watch. We would all eat dinner together, and then everyone would go home to get some rest before getting up at the ass crack of dawn the next morning to head off to the competition. After parting ways for the evening, I would go home, take a shower, and then roll my wet hair up into those perm rollers. And I had really long hair, so that was A WHOLE HELL OF A LOT OF PERM ROLLERS. My friend Jessica would often come over to help me get my head all done up.

During my senior year in high school, the Winter Olympics were held in Salt Lake City. Jessica and I were working on my hair while we watched the opening ceremonies one Friday evening. If you watched the opening ceremonies in Vancouver this weekend, you may have noticed that it is tradition that the country's names are read during the March of Nations first in French and then in English. And you may have also noticed that while some names are very similar in both French and English that some are wildly different. And while watching that, I had a flashback to that night during my senior year, hair full of perm rollers, watching TV with Jessica, and that announcer's voice saying "Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.....Iran."

It's Iran. Two syllables. And it was blah blah blah blah blah blah blah in French. COME ON, FRENCH PEOPLE, HOW COMPLICATED IS THIS?

Jessica and I laughed for about ten minutes straight that night at the absurdity of the fact that the name for Iran in French was so ridiculously long. And I know it's totally silly, and that you totally had to be there, but you know those moments? The moments that eight years later you stll remember and laugh at? Those are the best. Thanks, Olympics.

And just as a side note: my hair was MAGNIFICENT.