Signs of My Times

As either a marker of achievement or lameness, this is my 100th blog post. I have too much crap to say I guess.

Many of us have things in our lives that make us feel old. For some, it's baldness, male or female unfortunately. For others, watching our kids' birthdays come way too quickly. For most of us, looking back on how much things cost (gas at $0.99/gallon around 1998-99, $0.29 and $0.39 cheeseburgers and hamburgers at McDonald's, etc.), what were the cool cartoons growing up (Disney afternoon, Thundercats, Transformers, G.I. Joe, Voltron, etc.), and what were the cool fashions that are popping up again as "retro" (pegged pants, neon glasses, etc.) remind us of simpler, easier times. For me its gray hairs.

Keep in mind, that there are some of my friends who can remember, oh about 16 years ago, when I entered Woodcreek High School as a freshman, the days in math class where I would allow any and all members of the opposite sex to pick through my #6 length hair to find and pull out the single digit gray hairs I had then. So this is nothing new. My head of hair that is. I've been dealing with the ever saddening view point from my barber chair of seeing a higher ratio of white vs. black drop to the salon floor with relative exponential progression for more than a decade and a half. Today was a new low.

As those creepy and scary two numbers, 3 and 0, march ever onward toward my life, it is with much weeping and gnashing of my teeth that I admit the following: I have (now had) a gray chest hair.

I'm not a hair-less guy. As my wife remembered and shared this evening, I once had a friend in college "nair" my back hair into a cross. Somehow, I, along with my brother, captured this hair growing gene from what appears to be thin air, and have been developing it with relative ease since we hit double digit ages and it has consumed my body.

Another flashback to high school. My senior year during volleyball season, I used to dye my hair the color of whatever school our next game would be played at in order to advertise to our tiny fan base where we were playing without saying a word. In order to do so, with my jet black mane, I needed to bleach it everytime first in order to allow some of the lighter colors to show up. Hair does not and has never scared me. Until today.

Today marks the day I admit to the world and finally, more importantly since lying to yourself is foolish, to myself that I am o-l-d. There are some guys at my work, in their late 40's, full head of hair and not a gray hair anywhere to be found. Could be dye, but knowing how cheap cops can be, its probably legit. Sure they might have wrinkles or other signs of aging, but to me, no signs of their actual length on this earth are visible to the human eye. Me however, I can now no longer strut care free shirtless at a pool or the beach with the knowledge that my rug of a chest is monochromatic, but that it is now and forever will be (since I won't be dying my chest hair in this life) polychromatic. Sigh......