Out of Africa

Washed my hair this morning in L'Oreal Evive shampoo. Considered contacting their website to point out that it hurts your thumb to open the top of their plastic bottle. Decided it wasn't worth the effort - let them find out themselves. It's lovely, creamy shampoo like they use at the hairdressers. Makes me feel like my hair's going to come out all voluminous and shiny. It does shine a bit but it just slinks over my head like lanky, fine hair does. Takes a bit of gel - Taft, bought in France, I think, produced by Schwarzkopf in Germany - to get it to do anything other than hang around.
Pal has short-cropped Afro hair, mostly grey now. It's a legacy from his one black grandfather, a tall, handsome man who's Afro hair genes keep turning up several generations after the skin colour has faded. What it means for me is that if there's one straight hair longer than a quarter of an inch found in the bathroom sink or shower, it's mine. There's no escape - I'm to blame.
Not sure Bud would approve of me revealing this about his hair and his ancestor. He doesn't identify with Africa at all. Nor, for that matter, with India where the larger portion of his ancestors come from. He has migrant blood in him, he says, those are the places we've left behind. Life is about going forward, moving on. I point out that I, too, have African ancestors. Where else did Adam and Eve come from? Don't the scientists keep telling us that the human race started in Africa, probably in the Rift Valley? "That's a theory," Bud says, "it's not proven - and you might be from Africa, but I'm definitely not!"

38. I have straight, thin brown hair. I'd like to have big, voluminous hair that stands up.
39. I believe we all came from Africa. I'm part of the bunch that turned left at the top. You're all distant relatives - every one of you.
40. I like thick, creamy shampoo.