What exactly does that mean? It can mean more than a bad “do,” but currently, the thoughts that flood my memories of “bad” hair days are those bad episodes when my hair was indeed a fright rather than the episodes of bad experiences.

Many moons ago, as a young girl, Mom took me to the beauty parlor often — to have my hair thinned. It was so thick and heavy that no matter how hard we tried to get a ponytail high on my crown, it slid down the back of my head and rested on the back of my neck.

Everyone else had cute, bouncy ponytails that jiggled as they walked. I looked like a dowdy old woman. Thinning the thick hair helped for a time, but it grew so fast that soon it was back.

Pigtails and braids worked much better for me. Mom created the most perfect braids: she was genius at French braiding. Just ask all my nieces and their friends. They lined up for their turn to sit at her feet as she brushed, sorted and twisted the strands into works of art.

One hot summer day, when I was 7 or 8, parked in my usual spot underneath a shade tree with a book, the unspeakable happened.

The landlord had contracted men to reroof the house. Unbeknownst to me, they had left an uncovered bucket of tar under the same tree. I rested propped up against the trunk and became mesmerized by the story. Growing uncomfortable and shifting into a better position, the braid on the left side of my head plopped into the open bucket.

Startled, I sat upright, releasing the plaited hair from the gooey glob slowly dripping from my head. Horrified, I knew I was about to get killed — again.

Reluctantly, after managing to stop the dripping by swiping it through the grass and dirt, I gingerly entered the kitchen where my mother spent most of her time.

She took one look at me, and I swear steam came from both her ears. She pursed her lips turning red in the face. The scariest part was that she was speechless.

“Don’t move,” she barked. She returned with a huge pair of scissors, grabbed the end of my goopy braid and with a couple of rough cuts, whacked it off right at the base of my hairline. Tossing it in the trash, she said, “There!”

Stunned I finally managed to ask, “What about the other one?”

“Don’t you touch it! If you must wear one long and one short for a while, maybe you’ll pay more attention next time.”

Humiliated beyond belief, I had to go looking like a fool for an eternal week. Lesson learned — avoid tar like the plague. Finally, she cut the other side off, leaving me with a blunt cut that would make a clown blush.

Through the ensuing decades I endured so many bad haircuts that, finally, I became my own beautician — if you can call it that. After all, I had paid for some awful haircuts, so my logic was that if I gave myself a horrible cut (and I often did), at least they would be cheap.

With practice, eventually at least 95 percent of the time nobody could tell but me.

As a kid, Mom cut our hair. Holy Moly. It was dreadful. Straight and blunt was the only thing she knew — like using a deep bowl. I have a big cowlick in the front, but she was determined to give me bangs. Using Scotch tape to hold my hair down flat, she cut along the bottom edge of the cellophane to attempt a straight line. She must have been cockeyed. If that wasn’t bad enough, once the tape came off, the cowlick stuck up and out forming a canopy that resembled a camera lens as if it was about to take photos from my forehead.

Next, she was on a home permanent kick with brand names like Lilt, Prom and Toni Jr. They stunk to high heaven. My curls were always frizzy, if it curled at all. When she brushed it, you’d have thought she was performing an exorcism.

Later in life, a dear friend attending beauty school wanted to give me a free perm. She burned my hair so badly that I looked like a rusted Brillo pad with a scalded scalp. It took forever to grow out.

Later, my gray appeared in three huge spots, as if I encountered a bucket of paint instead of tar. Coloring was a disaster because my aquasize classes turned it green.

Now, my hair is thinning. It’s white and coarse, and I’m grateful to have hair at all, even if my head isn’t shaped as perfectly as Yul Brynner’s was.