Long Hair: The Rules.

1. Brush from the tip to the crown. This prevents snares and split ends. Use a good de-tangler sparingly, be aware that de-tanglers build up.
2. Invest in a good brush. I like the ergonomically designed bristle brushes best. No amount is too much to pay for this essential bit of hair equipment.
3. Use conditioner. From about collar length down, let it soak in 5 minutes, then rinse well. The better you rinse it off the more shine you will have later.
4. Buy scrunchees or the new plastic bands to tie up your hair.
5. NEVER EVER use lucky (rubber) bands to tie your hair.
6. Resist the urge to dye or perm your hair, not only does it look strange when it grows out (think tree rings here) but it damages the hair and <shudder> puts you at the mercy of Hairdressers. A once a year hair dye might become necessary if your hair naturally changes colour with the seasons i.e. darker in winter, lighter in summer. Try to dye it your own colour, it will look longer and healthier this way.
7. Keep spare tie backs on you, and learn how to braid or otherwise restrain your hair should you run out.
8. Do not drive a car with loose hair and the window open. I did once and my hair wrapped around an internal fitting. When I had to lean forward to get the brake, I couldn't, I was tied out of reach. Arrgh! Besides, the wind snarls hair into an ugly mess. This goes double for motorbike riders.
9. Bike riders should tie their hair and beards in several bands. The new plastic bands are good as they pull right out easily when you get to your destination. Using several bands stops the shorter mid length hair wrapping around the rest and creating a snarl. Tuck as much hair into your helmet as possible. Wear a helmet. Splattering your brains all over the side walk is bad for long hair.
10. Learn how to drape your hair artfully. Practice on shoulders, pillows and seat backs. Nicely draped hair is good looking hair.
11. Restrain hair when doing manual tasks, wrapping it around forks while drying up is tiresome and annoying. Slamming it in cutlery draws is no fun either, and your heart doesn't know the meaning of 'beating like a humming bird' till you've got your hair caught in a blender and it is rapidly pulling you in. Ditto for drill bits and, apparently, combine harvesters. Yuk.
12. Toilets. Be aware, hair that falls below the waist is best swept over the shoulder before you are seated. Start training yourself to do this as soon as hair is waist length. Trust me, you want to do this.
13. It is not funny to have small animals caught in your hair. Try to resist the urge to snuggle them. When in caves, wear a hat.
14. Put hair up as securely as possible before going Abseiling or doing any other adventure sports. My father once lost a thousand-dollar rope to untangle a girl whose hair became trapped in a lariat. Other people wouldn't have been so restrained; they would have cut off her hair. {shiver}
15. A neat braid or bun is recommended for ridding a horse. Long hair can be caught under the saddle, or around a saddle horn, or tangled in amongst the reins. Not a good thing to happen especially should you and the horse part company.
16. Other people think it is gross when you eat your own hair, and I personally am not fond of the feeling it makes when you pull it back out again. So tie it back for meals, and ice cream/fairy floss/toffee apples etc.
17. If you put your hair in a plait at night, secure it atop your head some how. Waking up to being strangled by your own braid is kind of traumatic. Especially if the end gets caught on a pyjama button and you have to pull it off to get free (the button, not the hair, though it was a close thing.)
18. Beware earrings and glasses with projecting appendages as your hair will inevitably wind itself around them and get caught. As your hair grows, danger items will also include broaches, sequin dresses/waistcoats, belt buckles and bags.
19. Learn to cut your own hair. Remember, The Hairdresser is your ENIMY. They want to cut your hair short. When they say it makes the hair grow faster to give it a trim, they lie. Hair is a dead material expelled from our scalps, how can cutting it encourage growth? It cannot. The truth is that they want to get rid of the split ends. HOWEVER, those split ends are our buffer zone. They protect the rest of the hair from damage. A hairdresser also hates people with long hair because it takes so long to do things with it i.e. dye, perm or style. It can also take three times as much chemicals to dye etc as short hair, and may look patchy or (for a perm) fall out altogether. This is of course due to the Hairdressers ineptitude, not the long hair, but it does make their stuff ups look bigger. Do not fall for the " I will only take off the tips' or 'I will just even it up some' trick. Give a Hairdresser an inch, and they will shave it all off. Mark my words. They are the ENIMY!
20. Only ever use hair dryers on the top of your hair, never the ends. It dries them out to fast, causing burns and split ends.
21. Remove bubble gum with vinegar.
22. Long hair is one of the sexiest things to use in lovemaking. Trail it, whip it, and glide with it. Learn to use your hair as a turn on, and explore the secrets of ticklish foreplay.
23. You have the length to do things with plaits and braids. Do them. Add flowers and bows, bells hidden in the end of pigtails, small mirrors and crystal beads. Rejoice in your hair, be creative!
24. But, be careful what you use to decorate your hair with. I wore a brass bell hidden in the end of my plait for awhile, which was fine until I jumped in the car without remembering to swing the plait forwards over my shoulder. I ended up with a huge bruise on my back. Painful. So was my experiment in wearing two small wrapped braids on either side of my face. I added large ceramic beads on the ends of them, and whacked myself in the teeth every time I turned fast. Owch. The latest craze to come to town is for tiny spirals with gems in the ends. I can put about fifty in my hair (Would be more, but they are expensive little buggers). At night, I carefully remove them, only to have one bounce out, days later. I feel a tug at my hair, assume something had fallen on my head (Spider is my first guess) and reach to quickly rip it off. It turns out to be a spiral, and I've just lost another hunk of hair to 'there's something in there' panic syndrome. Hmmm.
25. As your hair grows, it will gain in weight. This may give some people headaches. Overcome them by using a layer cut or chemical thinning out your hair (see a chemist, or <{shudder}> a Hairdresser). Alternatively, you can pin heavy locks to your clothes. With a net or tie, gather the hair and attach it to your clothes with broaches or safety pins. This can look good, but beware attaching them to outer jackets that you intend to take off. It hurts to yank your jacket and half your hair off in one, meant to be haughty, move. Same goes for when it is time to get undressed, remember the hair first.
26. Be careful putting clothes on. Not only can you zip and button hair into tops and pants, But I have tied it into my shoe laces as well. Okay, until I went to stand up. Yowch.
27. Beware candles. Do not pass things across a table that has them on it, or sit with your back to one. Let someone else deal with the birthday cake.
28. If someone yanks or even tugs at your hair to get your attention, hit them. This sort of habit can spread and before you know it every Jane, Dick and Harriet are pulling at you. So nip it in the bud and speak out the first time it happens. Be firm.
29. Beware Magpies and strange men* in London subways. They want to take your hair. (*A man in London would go up behind women with long hair and cut it off using a pair of scissors.)
30. Tease kittens with your hair at your peril. As they grow and become cats their claws harden & lengthen and their ability to leap on your head from the top of cupboards comes into play. Painfully into play.
31. Change the brand of your shampoo occasionally. This seams to strip build up. You can go back to your normal brand afterwards.
32. To keep a ponytail from coming out in messy dribs and drabs, pin it up with hair clips behind your ears. This works very well. I tried heaps of things to make a pony tail stay in all day, I had five tiebacks in trying to contain the stuff, and two little glide clips was all I needed. Humph.
33. To my horror I have discovered a thing not told to me by anyone before. When showering, the water pushes your hair down and..er..well...'between'. A hair wedgie is an unpleasant, hither too unmentioned, fact of long haired life.
34. Continuing the horror: places you find shed hair. OK, every one knows about the sink getting blocked by hair. Well, news flash, it doesn't stop there. Shed hair accumulates in strange and embarrassing places. Checked the armpit of your jumpers lately? Yes, hair gets trapped there as you swing your arms while walking and forms a mat. A huge mat can also develop under where you brush your hair. What doesn't get tangled up in your hairbrush will fall to the ground and mat in the carpet. Washing machines also like to take the odd floating long hairs and condense them into a surprise package inside your right jacket pocket. Glamorous, this is not.
35. Unexpected things you can get your hair caught in or wound around; body parts, tree branches, cracks in wooden furniture, brick-work, doors, draws, forks, old bubble gum on walls, rings, glasses hinges, Broaches, belt buckles, earrings, sequined clothes, zips, buttons, eye hooks, Velcro, guitar frets, small animals/birds/stick insects, babies, dog harnesses, machinery, saddles, Abseiling lariat, helmet fasteners, drills, blenders, blood-pressure cuff, pool filters, bike chains/tire spikes/gears, vacuum cleaners, sword hilts, chopsticks, firewood, gun barrels, railing spikes, toffee apples, flypaper, sticky tape, paint, hinges, studs, nails, joy sticks, steering wheels, cup hooks, door handles, nicker elastic, bow strings and combine harvesters. P.S. I've been caught by all of these except the drill, bike chain, Abseiling lariat and combine harvester.

Surfer 1, tells the tale of when she as a teen in the 60's had long thigh, yes thigh length hair. Her story is of wearing her first bikini, [no it was not yellow polka dotted!] to the beach. With hair hanging down her back and front like a curtain, she found guys were tripping all over themselves to see if she actually had on a suit! You could not tell for all the hair! She says; My sister and I were both blondes with green eyes, we would take turns ironing each others hair in the mornings. Weird stuff like that was happening all over. I got fed up with it when my first son got tangled in it and cut it off, that was in 1970. See Rule 13!

JudySue says: In your list of things dangerous to long hair you omitted skiing. A friend lost her waist-length blonde hair to a ski-lift. It was a shock to see her with a bob the next day but at least she still had her head!

Buzzd says; add a section like: Weird places your hair turns up, and you can't blame anyone else 'cuz it's your length and color and nobody else you know has hair this length or color. ;-)

To which I must confess, "Yes, that is one of my hairs floating in the 50% Sulfuric acid solution. What ya gonna do about it? Huh!" end guilty confession. (OK, so I don't do guilt well.

Buzzd also wishes to add that cheep computer chairs like to eat hair, she is forever pulling clumps out of them, and the seat covers on her truck.

Oh, another new thing to get your hair caught around, the legs of the bed (I have a low bed). I blame Kismit, the cat. She must have played with it at night when it was dangling over the edge. See Rule Number 28. Ahh, I should take my own advice more often.

Warning! Researches interrogating men who stalk and rape others have discovered that they look for certain things. Amongst them are easy to undo clothing, isolation and long hair. Hair bound in a pony, or flowing free, or in a long braid is easy to grab and so use to control their victim. So if you are going somewhere you are a bit iffy about, wear your hair in a bun, under a cap, move with a crowd of others, learn serious self defence.