Girl, I knew NOTHING about haircare!
My mother is white with very straight long hair and when I was a child she used to wash my hair and my sisters once a week with whatever shampoo and conditoner happened to be on sale and then pull it back tight into one or two braids with vaseline. She brushed and rebraided our hair everyday adding more vaseline. By the end of the week our hair was so greasy and dirty, it was a nightmare having it washed.
I "discovered" curling irons and flar irons when I was about 12 and my mother was glad to let me take over my own haircare. I fried the hell out of my hair, sometimes I would dip the hairbrush in a cup of water and then brush my hair wet, tearing through the tangles. Then I curled the wet hair and heard it sizzle!
I slicked it all down with vaseline after I was done.
I literally burned whole patches of hair off. I had so many short burned sections on my head it wasn't even funny. My hair always had a "burned" smell.
I "taught" my sister who is two years younger how to "do" her hair with the curling iron and grease too. We both thought we were so cute!
Then she decided using a curling iron or flat iron took to much time and she showed me how to use the reular iron!
We left so much grease on the iron one night that when our father plugged it in the morning he had a fit. We had to buy a new iron for clothes and my sister kept the old one for her hair.