I recently found my first gray hair (and one other thing that makes me want to kill myself)
To be clear, it wasn’t so much that I noticed the bright gray hair on top of my head as it was my boss who noticed it and pointed it out in the middle of a serious meeting (in all fairness, he and I were the only people in the meeting and the embarrassment factor was therefore pretty low).
“What do you mean GRAY HAIR?” I shouted.
“One of your hairs is gray,” he responded calmly.
(cue my eyes transforming into big Frisbees of panic)
“No fucking way,” I mumbled as I flew from the chair to the mirror.
“Yeah, see, right there,” he pointed.
“Fucksauce,” I thought. Followed by “great, now I’m going to have to start coloring my hair, like, tomorrow, which I totally can’t afford. A month before my 23rd birthday and already my body has given up on me, brushed me off as an old ass lady who should crochet onesies for babies she’ll never have now that she’s thundering toward menopause with the force of a hundred bison.”
Somehow, I managed to not to let my crazy tongue reveal what my crazy head was doing, and kept the thoughts reined in enough to just be a dull roar beating against the inside of my skull.
“Are you okay?” my boss asked laughingly.
“This ISN’T FUNNY,” I whined.
“It’s no big deal,” he answered nonchalantly.
“Oh yeah? Until I QUIT because you’re working me too hard aka causing me to get prematurely GRAY HAIRS.”
“Let’s move on,” he suggested.
**
The other (completely unrelated) thing that makes me want to kill myself is when a rap song uses police sirens as part of its musical accompaniment. Stop terrifying me! Every single time I hear one of these songs on the radio I’m convinced that I’m getting pulled over. Every single time. There are instruments you know, use those.
I’ve had people point out my gray hairs to me…in high school. I’ve come to terms with the fact that at 21 I have a few gray hairs and will continue to have grays until my entire head goes white (at which point I’m definitely breaking out the cotton candy colored dyes!).
I have very very dark hair though, so I think the grays are just easier to spot on my head.
Also I read somewhere that your body DOES start to regenerate itself slower after you turn 22. Which is why I plan to make 22 the best year ever and immediately become a slave to skin care and multi vitamins when June of 2009 comes around…
I got my first gray hair at age 19. Five years later, it’s still my only gray hair. Don’t panic yet.
I know! I hate the siren thing…so annoying. That has to be taking years off of my life with the job it does on my heart, EVERY TIME!
im totally with you on the damn sirens!!!!
sorry about the hair!
It happens to me too often! I’m driving around, listening to music when suddenly I hear sirens. I look in all my mirrors, anxiously awaiting the lights. Nothing. I was fooled by the radio. Damn you.
OMG, this was hilarious. You are such a great writer!
One time I was at a housewarming party, and thought I was being nice to the hostess by pointing out something in her hair - turns out it was a gray hair, which made me feel SO BAD for drawing attention to it in front of other people. Oops!
I so do the bad thing and yank the greys. So far that whole “pluck one and three will attend it’s funeral” thing isn’t coming true, so I’m sticking with that. (I only get one every so often anyway.)
And I do the same thing with the police sirens in songs!!! Haha. Sublime had this song with dogs barking in the beginning and I would always look outside to look for the dogs. Doh.
Nice boss. Don’t ask him if you look fat in anything, he’s just going to say, “How many hot pockets did you eat last night?”
Oh, I’m sorry. That’s really traumatic. My hair is light and I get it highlighted regularly, so I don’t really know what color it is. And I very deliberately don’t check for grey, although I imagine I have a bunch. As for the sirens, they scare the crap out of me when I’m driving.
what’s worse than finding your first gray hair? Finding your first THREE WHITE HAIRS. UGH!!!!!
I feel your pain.
oh i hate the songs with the sirens in the background. it takes another five minutes of driving after the song is over for my heart to stop pounding.
haha! totes had this experience a few months ago. i was surprised how much it freaked me out!
I wish I had a job where I could say “fucksauce”! Sorry about the hair, though. :-/
Oh, and I am so with you on the damn sirens. That also goes with the “don’t make my think my cell phone is going off” rule that I have for songs. Seriously, what the hell, Justin Timberlake?
OMG - the sirens! I COULD NOT AGREE WITH YOU MORE. It pisses me off. A lot.
Don’t flip out yet! I had my first gray hair freshman year of college and haven’t seen one since. You’re probably okay =)
I feel the same way about sirens or siren-like-noises in music! Freaky!
Also, this is why I am glad to be blonde. FAR more difficult to spot the errant gray.
gray hairs aren’t all that bad. i’ve had a few random ones over the years but nothing major yet luckily, haha.
and word to songs with sirens, i freaking hate it.
I also hate said police sirens in music. Freaks me out. Although it does always remind me of this time my boyfriend and I were behind a cop and he was turning right (with no blinker) and my boyfriend “accidentlly’ honked at him. haha.
you should just find a place that sells NON box color to regulars joes and cosmetology students. Color is usually 5 bucks and developer is about 10 but lasts a couple times. Ask a lady in the store to help you, she should be able to.
Don’t panic, the hair almost always changes slowly and imperceptibly and first greys show up earlier in darker haired people. My boyfriend noticed my first obvious grey several years ago and thus far I’m still pulling off brown in my thirties with no coloring and no real addition to the number of bad colored hairs. Your boss is a jerk tho!
When I got my first grey hair many, many moons ago, I wore it proudly. I wasn’t going to be one of *those* women who cared about such things. My umpteenth grey hair later and I can proudly say that Miss Clairol and I, yeah, we’re best friends.
I’m so glad I am not the only one who turns down the radio when I hear sirens, and 99.9% of the time it is the stinking song. I do kind of freak.
I’ve given up on the whole counting grey hair. I have a lot more than one. It costs too much to color. 60 bucks every 6 weeks. When you realize what you can do with an extra 60 bucks ever month, you realize its not that bad yet.
The sirens freak me out too!
As for the gray hairs. As a woman 12 years your senior all I can say is, sister, I get why you are upset. I’ve had gray hair since my twenties and it is really expensive to color it.
ahhhh this happened to me recently also. and yes, i also flipped the fuck out. ugh. it was right before class and as the students walked in i was screaming “you jerks are giving me gray hairs!!! i’m too young for this!!!” but i’m trying to convince myself that it’s normal to have a few of those. i wonder if there has been any actual scientific evidence proving the correlation between gray hairs and stress. because if so, i’m fearful for my hair follicles.
I get it. I so, so get it. I have two gray hairs that grow right in the middle of my part at the very front of my hairline and stand straight up. That’s what getting deployed does to you. I tried plucking them, but that didn’t work. I gave up.
Also, YES! to the police siren thing in songs. It freaks me the fuck out and then, even worse, makes me feel like a dumbass for looking in all my mirrors and trying desperately to determine where the cop is.
I have so much grey hair, although I’m fastly approaching 30. My 19 year old little sister does too.
P.S. I also hate the sirens thing.
Just pluck the damn hair out. It sucks but you can just use that temporary dye when you start to get more.
I’ve had some grey hairs for awhile… GAH! (I just pluck ‘em out)
And can I say - FUCKSAUCE??? Love it!
I know this is so NOT comforting, but I actually like when people start sprouting grays. It’s just so classy.
I just found my first gray hair a few months ago too. But instead of keeping it to myself, I went barreling out of the bathroom to show the guy I just started dating. Mind you, he’s completely salt-and-pepper so had NO sympathy. And I had been feeling so cute, with my hair up in two little clips. Can’t bring myself to put my hair up like that again for fear of finding more…. And I’ve got a head full of blonde hairs now so I can live happily in denial for a little longer.
Just call it blonde. I bet it was just the lighting.
fucksauce?!
AMAZING. hahaha. also - i completely panic when i hear a siren too. gah. quit it with the pseudo heart attacks already!
Dude! Gray hairs rock! They’re a sign of experience. At least that’s what I tell myself. My mother went completely gray by 25. She had a silver streak in high school. I have three lovely gray hairs, and I don’t intend on pulling them out or dying them. Embrace the gray!
But yeah, totally with you on the police sirens thing.
i got my first gray hair around 23. i named it after my ex husband.
of course, my grays never see the light of day. come to think of it, i’m not actually sure what my natural hair color is.
Hear hear on the siren thing, dido for phone ring tones, babies crying and screams. Not cool on the radio people.
No grey hair for me yet (not that I’m rubbing it in) but don’t worry. I think grey (note spelling!) looks distinguished. Maybe you could ask you boss for a raise due to your maturity?!
So funny…I’m lucky, because my mom is 54 and still doesn’t have any gray hairs! So, hopefully, I’ll follow in her footsteps, and I won’t gray until late.
If not, I’ll feel the same way you do.
Oh darlin’. One of my best friends just turned 21 and she already gets grays. I guess I’m lucky that I have light hair. I’m sure it’s not that bad though. Be like Stacy on ‘What Not To Wear’ and just embrace it. I’m sure it’s actually pretty cute.
you need to learn how to hide your buds better.
Totally with you on the siren thing.
Haha! That’s awesome…and I also hate (HATE!) sirens-as-”music”. It totally freaks me out.
xox
Haha, a few months back, my friend said “ooh, you have a gray hair”, and that was the exact reaction I had too. I was born with one, but where she was showing me, it was in a completely different spot. So of course I freaked! I wasn’t even 23 at the time! So I hear you.
The siren thing with rap music is exactly why I don’t care to listen to rap music. That and the overdoing of sexual innuendos and women degradation. Makes you want to gouge your ears out with a sharp rusty pole.
dude. the siren thing? freaks me out. every. single. time. so with you on that.
Okay, I’ve had not one, not two, but THREE gray hairs in my lifetime. And those are just the ones I can see…in the front of my head. haha. And i totally laughed out loud, picturing you freaking out over the sirens. so effing funny!
LOL. I COMPLETELY feel you. On the gray hair AND the police sirens in rap songs. Two nights before my 23rd birthday this year, my boyfriend found a white hair on the side of my head. Then the day OF my birthday, my hairdresser found another one at the top of my head. I did all I could to hold back tears of hysteria, bah!