"You are going to catch your death of cold!"

I heard our mother's scolding voice in my head say this morning as I walked out into the 38 degree temps with wet hair.

Certainly not what I wanted to do.

But after showering, I "put" my face on, then pulled out the blow dryer and plugged it in.

Nothing blew.

So I went into the laundry room thinking that something had to be wrong with the bathroom outlet, but if that were the case, the laundry room outlet had "something wrong" with it also.

Nope...my blow dryer went belly up.

Kaput.

Suddenly I was thrown back-in-the-day when there were no such things as "blow dryers".

As kids we took baths in the evenings, and not only were we not allowed to go outside with wet hair in fear of imminent death, we also were not allowed to go to bed with wet hair for the same reason.

So we were left to sit over heat registers in the winter and brushing in the summer's evening heat of the house, until our hair was dry.

It wasn't until the late 1960's, when our mom acquired a bonnet hair dryer...

that we used with only the hose attached (our own precursor to modern day blow dryers), that we no longer had to resort to heat vents and brushing for the drying of our hair.

But this morning, again dutifully obeying my Mom's voice (even now at 51 years of age), I drove all the way to the train with the red rocket's COLD (NO heat - long story!) air on high, with the vents pointed directly at my head.

drying my hair so i would not get dead