Gray Hair "Down There" and Some of the Other Indignities of Growing Old

Oh, the indignities of growing old.  They are broad in scope and without number. 

I started going gray when I was in my mid or late 20s.  But, it wasn’t anything I was going to get overly excited about.  It was only one or two and I only really noticed them when I was in bright light and they were sticking straight up out of the top of my head like my head had been discovered by an outside nation and they planted their flag in claim.  I’d always look at it with a mixture of exasperation and smug joy.  The exasperation came from the mere fact that it was so very obtrusive, so proud to be intruding that it just had to stand up tall.  But that smug joy?  Well, that came from being absolutely convinced that that gray hair would bring many more with it and once they stood unified, I would be looked at with a certain measure of respect for the very fact of being old…er.  Y’see, I have what’s known as a baby face.  I could post my first grade class photo and anybody who knows me would take no time at all to identify me amid the cluster of faces.  Problem is, since then, they only come in at the rate of approximately two per year.  They’re not helping the “baby face” situation…at all.  They do, however, subject me to the occasional comment about them from some student who is taller than I.  Fabulous.

Gray hair notwithstanding, growing old has brought a really interesting set of changes to my life.  And read “interesting” as “what the fuck?!” 

How about the morning’s first pee?  You know, the one that starts just as I’m pulling my PJ bottoms down?

That’s not good enough for you?  How about those little red freckles appearing on your chest?  Yeah…those are cute…if you’re trying to look like a six year old with chicken pox…or, even better, a teenager with wayward bacne.  Great.

The sneezing/farting syndrome, an (or two) errant chin hairs, less than perky breasts, looser extra weight than before, the inability to eat one peanut’s worth of calories more than your scientifically calculated recommended daily caloric intake without either gaining weight or being constipated for three days.  Gahd! 

But all those things…every single one of them would be rather tolerable were it not for the truly astonishing discovery of one single gray hair “down there”!  DOWN THERE!! 

In glancing down whist perched on the bowl one afternoon, something odd caught my eye.  At first, I thought, “Can’t be!”  I was SURE that it was a reflection of the light pouring in from the skylight just overhead…and a few feet to the left…and a foot or two forward.  But light does funny things….right?  Right?? 

A shift in the offender’s placement proved to me that, no matter what  the light was doing at that precise moment in time, it wasn’t reflecting off of the single hair that was, in fact, gray.

Dammit.