jlpearce
September 7th, 2009, 07:54 PM
I've seen mentions of a sock bun here several times, but never really paid attention, since my hair isn't long enough to go up in a bun yet. However, I was looking through old pictures today and found some from when I was in the Navy, and it reminded me. You can have hair that's any length you want while you're in the Navy, you just have to be able to get it up above your collar while you're in uniform. I had waist-length hair at one point while I was in and I wore a lot of buns. However, when you first get to boot camp, one of the first things they do is to chop off all your hair.
After boot camp I went to what's called an A School, where you learn your job before you go out into the real Navy, on a ship or whatever. The sock bun was kind of a rite of passage for people in A school, it meant that your hair was long enough to have to wear up, but not long enough to actually do anything else with. I remember all the girls in school sitting on the floor and cutting the toes off a pair of socks and figuring out how to do the bun, how to get our hair to cover the sock so it didn't show and how to secure the ends. The next day we showed up at the morning meeting and all the guys were shocked--where had all this hair come from!
I call it a rite of passage because graduating from the sock bun was also a big deal, when the tail got too long or you could finally do a "real" bun. I had no idea it was something that you could do with long hair, too!
Hope this isn't too irrelevant, it's a funny memory, and it was kind of a shock today when I looked up how to do a sock bun and found that it was exactly the same thing we did back when I was in the Navy! I was expecting something totally different...:)
After boot camp I went to what's called an A School, where you learn your job before you go out into the real Navy, on a ship or whatever. The sock bun was kind of a rite of passage for people in A school, it meant that your hair was long enough to have to wear up, but not long enough to actually do anything else with. I remember all the girls in school sitting on the floor and cutting the toes off a pair of socks and figuring out how to do the bun, how to get our hair to cover the sock so it didn't show and how to secure the ends. The next day we showed up at the morning meeting and all the guys were shocked--where had all this hair come from!
I call it a rite of passage because graduating from the sock bun was also a big deal, when the tail got too long or you could finally do a "real" bun. I had no idea it was something that you could do with long hair, too!
Hope this isn't too irrelevant, it's a funny memory, and it was kind of a shock today when I looked up how to do a sock bun and found that it was exactly the same thing we did back when I was in the Navy! I was expecting something totally different...:)