Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

 As a youngster, I remember being tucked into bed pretty early in the evening, often by 7 pm.  I'm confident that it was 7 because I could hear the Lawrence Welk show come on the television. An old metal grate in my bedroom floor amplified sounds from the living room TV below. There I'd lay, pressing a pillow over my head, trying to block out the annoying accordion-led melodies and incessant tap dancing sounds of Bobby and Cissie. 

There are some routines that I'm happy not to repeat as an adult. As a child, Saturday nights were the worst for sleeping. The Saturday night scrub in the tub wasn't so bad but Mom would put curlers in my hair, making it impossible to hold the pillow over my head and block out downstairs noise. In preparation for Sunday church, I would be put to bed with freshly washed hair coiled around porcupine-like curlers secured with stiff plastic hair picks. Mom had a sure-fire rolling method that guaranteed morning curls and prevented curlers from falling out of my fine hair. She'd hold tension on the hair while t i g h t l y rolling my hair around the bristly black curlers until they hugged the hair root. If you didn't hold your head by pulling counter tension she'd jerk the curler just enough for it to hurt a little bit. The taut headdress produced a burning sensation on my scalp and I always imagined it slanted my eyes. It was impossible to find a sleeping position where the curlers didn't painfully dig into your scalp. And Mom wondered why I was always so crabby during church the next morning?!?

Some day I will ask my mother why it was necessary to have AquaNet frozen curls to
attend Lutheran church. 

Thank GOD for the invention of the curling iron. He must have heard all my Saturday night bedtime prayers.

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Child Torture Device circa. 1960's