“Where were you when you first fell in love with du-rags?”
she asked, as we sat in the park people-watching and rehashing last night’s
episode of Scandal.
My first du-rag was a family heirloom, handed down from my
older brother, who also doubled as my barber.
There it sat on the bathroom counter--a small, mysterious,
black mound of silk. I knew
nothing of this foreign apparatus, its origin or its purpose.
But the moment when my brother brushed my hair, put the
du-rag on my head, and I stood in front of the mirror watching the cape flow
gracefully down to my shoulders, I knew that it was the security blanket to my
Linus Van Pelt, the wand to my Harry Potter, th- the tuxedo to my Janelle Monae.
I slept in it. Hooped in it. Wore it under hats. Wore it
when I read. Wore it when I did yard work. Wore it after a fresh haircut. Wore
it when I was in desperate need of a cut. Wore it in public like a purple
heart, an Olympic medal.
That. Du-rag. Made. Me. Feel. Invincible.
My collection expanded—white cotton, black
satin, camouflage, one’s without the seam down the center, one’s with long
strings, one’s with short strings, one’s with two-tones before color-blocking
was a *thing*. I had a du-rag for every day of the week, and 2 for Sunday.
I began to notice that the strings of my du-rag left a line
across my forehead, so even when I didn’t have it on, it still felt like it was
with me, like a guardian angel, y’all. A constant reminder of the inseparable,
indescribable bond shared between a Black man and his du-rag.
After wearing the same du-rag for many, many years, and
accidentally leaving it home during a recent vacation, I was forced to purchase
a new one. Much to my surprise, the cape was sleeker, more refined, more
contoured than my first. The stitching was fortified, the silk was silkier. The
work of a quality craftsman. It was this new du-rag technology and a suggestion
from @
Natelege that inspired me to write this post. One day, I’ll pass my
du-rag down to my son, and he’ll pass it down to his son, and so forth and so
on. Just like the stories of Harriet Tubman and Jackie Robinson, I just felt like the
importance of du-rags should be documented in the annals of history.
Good day.
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