“I’d like it to look kind of like Marie,” I told my friend. After an hour of ratting and teasing and two cans of industrial strength hairspray, she was done. I looked in the mirror in dismay. “Actually, I meant Marie Osmond, not Marie Antoinette.”

My mom used to tease her hair until it reached a cruising altitude of small aircraft. She would then spray enough Aqua Net so that you needed a gas mask and Haz-Mat suit to enter the bathroom.

Yesterday, I rooted around under my sink, not sure of what I would find. I knew that I had bought hairspray sometime during the Reagan administration, but had the can followed me around the country, finding its way home after having been tossed in a dumpster somewhere outside Glen Burnie, Maryland?

There it was, waiting patiently to turn my hair into the texture of cotton candy and leave it crackling to the touch. Since my book came out Thursday, I wanted to be prepared in case the paparazzi ambushed me in the dry goods aisle at Wal-Mart.

Oddly, there were no tabloid hounds, so I had put on mascara and lacquered my hair for nothing. Man, I hate when that happens. It’s probably just as well since nobody was telling me how cute I looked. My daughter asked, “Is that the look you were going for?”

I think I’ll steer clear of hairspray in the future. I made the mistake of breathing in while spraying, and my nose hairs are still standing at attention. Freebasing shampoo is really not a viable option, so it may be some time before my cilia are smooth and silky again.

This morning I woke up with a square head, from having my hair smooshed against the pillow. That’s not the look I was going for.