Must be a hereditary condition

Once upon a time there was a little blond-headed girl who wished and wished she could be a curly-haired blond little girl. So she asked and asked her mother to give her a permanent. Her mother had done this for her before, and the little girl oh-so-wanted to do it again.

The mother graciously agreed and spent an afternoon carefully rolling and papering and clipping and applying all sorts of chemicals and solutions to the little girl's head.

And sure enough, when it was all done, she had beautiful curls.

This made the little girl feel SO grown-up, that when it was time for her nightly bath, she decided to take a shower instead.

So the little girl stood under the water streaming down on top of her freshly permed hair. The water pounded and pounded and straighted out the entire top-half of those beautiful curls. And down the drain went the perm.

Mother and daughter did live happily ever after, in the long run. ;)

But there is more to the story.

This little girl grew up to have a little boy of her own.

One day the little boy got a cold. :(

So his mama gave him some medicine to help it go away. The medicine said not to eat or drink anything for at least 15 minutes.

Approximately 13 1/2 minutes after his medicine, the little boy came out of the bathroom. His mama asked him if he washed his hands with soap.

"Yes," the little boy said proudly, "and then I brushed my teeth!"

The mama smacked her forehead with her hand and knew that in a sewer somewhere, a long-lost permanent was laughing and dancing with a fresh batch of cold medicine.