Black Hair Needs an Explaination

i'm currently in an interracial relationship and due to the nature of my profession, i invariably find myself discussing black hair.  where this doesn't seem like a big deal, it really is.

i mean, how do you go about telling someone who washes their hair every day or every other day that you wash your hair once a week?  from the outside looking in, i must appear filthy.  add to this that i have dreadlocks and lord, he probably thinks i have colonies of critters laying claim to different parts of my scalp.

i recall back in college that i had mistakenly left a tub of Dudley's hair dressing sitting next to a hot curling iron.  by the time i'd returned at the end of the day, the curling iron had melted the plastic and the entire contents of the jar.  so my room smelled like someone had just received a fresh press.

not a big deal until you realize that my roommate was white.  she said that she'd looked for what was causing the smell but couldn't find anything.  i immediately set to cleaning it up and said "oh, it's my curling iron."  she in turn said, "but was it?"...referring to the smell.  apparently she liked the scent.  maybe she thought it was a candle?

anyhoo, i dodged the question repeatedly until i finally lashed out and said, "it's grease!  it's grease ok!"

in retrospect, "hair dressing" would've probably made far more sense to her than "grease."  to this day, i'd like to think she's still baffled and wondering what pleasantly smelling animal oil i was putting on my hair.

where the incident with my roommate has never really repeated itself, where my white boyfriend has never truly made me feel uncomfortable about my hair, the explainations cometh.  and hell, truthfully it's not just a white thing.  some black folk are pretty messed up when it comes to their perception of natural hair...especially dreadlocks.

so am i the only one?  i mean, do you get sick of having to explain or almost apologize for your freakin hair?  why the hell are people so interested in how we care for our shiz anyway?  maybe i'm just being defensive?  all i know is, it'd be nice to be able to respond to questions regarding my hair without reading an essay.