My beautiful friend Dawn decided to dread her hair. Did I mention that she was a Mary Kay consultant just last year? She is the gorgeous gal who ran around with perfect makeup and shiny bouncing locks, passing out cards and Mary Kay freebies in the blink of an eye, and looking like she was about to win that pink car any second. I swear.

Motherhood drove her to it, she said. She was tired of enduring the daily torture as her baby ripped individual strands from her head one-by-one, while she tried to be a good attachment parent and wore the adorable little munchkin in the sling for hours on end.

When gobs of postpartum hair began to fall out all over the floor, she couldn't help but feel angry and sad because she knew that if her hair had already been dreaded, nothing would have been lost and there wouldn't be gi-normous furballs to clean off the carpet every morning.

Dreadlocks could be the solution to all varieties of motherhood madness, she postulated. It would be so easy to get up and go. No need to spend time you don't have attempting to beautify while your children climb the walls and stick macaroni and cheese in the air vents. Dreadlocks are ready when you are. Just shake and go. Not to mention, for years it had been Dawn's dream to have pimped-out dreadlocks. She had only been restraining herself due to her husband's personal reservations (and of course the Mary Kay dress code—which according to Dawn did not specifically say no dreadlocks, but was kind of inferred somehow.)

The time had come. She could wait no longer. She ordered the Supa Dupa Dread Kit online, guaranteed to “make ya some pimp-nasty-kick-ass locks.” Dawn was serious about her dreads. She wasn't going to simply stop grooming and let the hair do its own Rastafarian thang. (Which is definitely what I would do if I decided to dread. Some mornings when I wake up I'm already halfway there.) No, Dawn wanted neat dreads. She wanted clean dreads. She wanted dreads that people would adore and admire.

She asked for my help. Not one to pass up an opportunity for a learning experience, I happily obliged. But I had no idea what I was in for. Dawn brought over an instructional DVD, special combs, hair clips, Lock Peppa, Dread Butta, a boatload of tiny rubber bands, and her Mary Kay mirror.

I was amazed at the effort it took to make perfect dreadlocks. I spent half the time I was dreading concerned that my dreads would not measure up. Were they thick enough? Even enough? Did they look like a beaver tail? Were there slick spots that had been missed? And somehow I never did get the hang of tying them off perfectly at the end.

But Dawn was sweet. She encouraged and reassured me even when some of my dreads looked a little bit more like bird nests than the lovely ropes she was capable of making. In the end, we only dreaded a third of her head. But she was pleased. Dreadlocks had become a symbol of freedom to her. A method to the madness. Control within the chaos. Meanwhile, the children behaved remarkably well through all of the hairdo-ing. Diego only threw a ball at her nursing baby's head three times and less than two plates of food were smashed into the carpet during the entire five-hour process. It was as pleasant and uneventful as you could expect with four munchkins in the house.

Hmmmm…. Maybe there is something magical about dreadlocks? I'm going to take just a tiny peek at that website. I'll let you know what I decide….