flat hair...no fair...

This is my beautiful daughter Jenny. Notice her lovely curls? I love her hair and wish it was mine. She hates curly hair and wishes it was straight!
This is my beautiful daughter Christina (Consider The Coffee). See her lovely waves? I want them too. Unfortunately, my hair is thin and straight with a little wave at the back of my neck. My husband's hair is short, but when we met in the late 70s he sported some end of hippie era waves. No, I take after my mom and dad, dad who was balding in his 40s and my mom who had transparent hair in her 60s. Well, I am not bald or transparent yet, so hopefully I will go a different route than my forefathers.
I have spent my whole life trying to make my hair look fuller. In the 80s I would have my sister in law Margie give me "RAVE" perms. Remember them? Basically a mild body wave until I suggested to Margie to use the smallest perm rods to give just a little more curl. She wasn't sure about the tiny rods, but I said I wasn't worried since it was such a mild perm (or so I thought). Little did I know that it was the previously used large rods that gave me the slight wave. When I rinsed my hair in the sink upstairs and briskly rubbed my towel through my tresses, I was greeted in the mirror by a tight curly fro! I took so long upstairs because I was re wetting my hair and trying to brush the curls out (you see how naive I was about curly anything) only to have a frizzier and bigger fro. Panic began to engulf me as Margie knocked on the door wondering if everything was ok. I answered, "well, I don't have thin or flat looking hair anymore..." Upon opening the door, shock filled my sister in laws face as she gazed at my huge do. "Wet your hair again, I have a pick we can use, maybe that will make it look better" It didn't. And I did all this while my husband was away at a mens retreat from church. I wanted to surprise him and that I did. He was very kind in telling me it did not look that bad, but I knew it did. That was confirmed by the fact that the only person who really liked it was my father-in-law. My mother in law has been sporting a tightly set , teased, molded and shellacked pouf since the 60s. I looked so sad and so pitiful, that my sweet next door neighbor paid for me to go to a salon and have them straighten it for me. Again, I was naive and thought that was a good idea. The end result was a weirdly frizzy straightened look that just appeared dry and damaged and wouldn't bend at all.
Of course it took a long time for that fiasco to grow out.
So...I don't want a perm or anything scary or 80s as that. I just want a little wave. That's all. I guess I will have to learn the art of adding the right touch of wave with a curling iron. NEVER PERM GIRLS. YOU WILL BE SORRY!