what happens to a dream deferred?

When I was in junior high, I would fantasize about noble things, such as winning debating championships, but I would also fantasize about somehow coming up with the princely sum of seventy-five dollars of my very own, and then securing my mother's permission to spend it on a spiral perm at the salon inside JC Penney at the mall, so my hair would be Much, Much Larger.

I also fantasized about having braces (well, about having had braces, as I hadn't even had them on yet, and what I really wanted was straight teeth, not the braces themselves), about replacing my big plastic glasses with contact lenses, about being allowed to wear patent-leather pumps to school, and about owning a big-shouldered suit which I would wear with a giant metal belt, all of which would make my hypothetical surfer boyfriend love me.

I think what I really wanted was to look pretty much just like this:


photo by Aeric Meredith-Goujon
And now, I can.

I am so rad.