There are always gray areas

Seldom are the answers to life’s difficult questions black or white. We’ve come to know that “in between” as gray areas. We could go into important stuff like social issues, but if you’ve read my blogs for any length of time, you’ll have already guessed that I’m talking about my hair.

I’ve been coloring my roots for years now, but recently, the number of brown hairs in the grow-out zone are vastly outnumbered by the gray hairs. Add to this the tendency of women in my family to go bald after menopause, and you can understand why concern for my hair eclipses … say, government subsidized health care, or stem cell research.

My grandma had a styrofoam head on her dresser. At night, when she put her hair away, the head took on the look of a chia pet from hell. I’ve tried to avoid the fake hair route by using minoxidil. A funny thing happens when you use Rogaine before going to bed. I spend a lot of the night sleeping on my left side. When you bury the left side of your face in a pillow case coated in Rogaine, you tend to develop mutton chops on one cheek.

This leaves you with two choices: spend equal time sleeping on your right side so you can enjoy exchanging morning breath with your spouse, and at least have a bilateral beard; or give up on the Rogaine and regularly snake out the drain in your bathtub. It’s never a pretty sight when the plumber’s snake pulls approximately four wet hamsters out of your pipes. Oh, the humanity!

My hair has been various shades of brown and auburn over the years. Once, when my daughter was taking her State Boards for beauty school, I was her “subject” and my hair came out very lustrous, and shiny, and bubble gum pink. She didn’t get marked down for this, because my hair looked like strawberry frosted donuts, and apparently the Examiner was hungry.

Now without enough brown hair in the grow-out zone, I’ve forgotten the original color. I could always go bleached blonde to help hide the grow out, but that would obviously clash with my sideburns.

I suppose I should just let the gray grow out and be done with it. Then I would be free to blog about more important things, like my middle-age mustache.

13 thoughts on “There are always gray areas

  1. So funny that I just finished my morning pluck of the chin hairs. A couple of sneaky, stubborn ones tried to fight with my tweezer and me, but we won. This time.
    I don’t do gray. I won’t do gray. I will be one of those 90 year olds in the rest home with a carrot top wisp of a doo, and all the men vying for my favors. Of course, they will get nowhere because I will be playing hard-to-get (or keep awake). It’s something to dream for…….

    • I have one neck whisker. It’s positioned just right to where I can’t see it under my chin without doing a couple yoga positions. It usually gets pretty long before I find it.

  2. I just went out and bought some hair colour for myself. I hate going to the hairdresser (even though I should) to have them do it…I should go there so they can get me the proper colour because I never manage to pick out the right one for me…I try to go lighter, but the dark gray hairs (of the salt and pepper variety) don’t like the hair colour I choose…the light gray hairs do…so, I just look silly. If I go too dark, then I just look silly, again…It’s a lose-lose situation here…

    Oh, and about the mutton-chops…they don’t look good on anybody…sorry!!!

    • Elvis did the mutton chops, and everybody thinks he was dreamy. I’ll just put on my white glittery suit with the cape, and watch out Vegas!

  3. Darn! I had a hair post all prepared for Monday and now you’re going to think I’m not only a stalker, but a copycat stalker!

  4. I’ve had a couple close encounters of the hair-kind:

    A girlfriend, during the summer between 7th & 8th grade, decided to apply bleach on the beach << to my hair that is. I went from normal brown to carrot-top.

    Somewhere in the 70s, I was the lead in a traveling company of the show Hair. The script calls for blond. I bought some cheapo stuff and felt like I had campfire embers spread over my scalp–busted my knee with a sliding stop on the bathroom floor trying to kill the pain. So, my advice is to buy the expensive stuff…

    Then, later sometime, when I was older somewhat, I got paid to play Santa. Went almost-white (really a sort of white-screaming-blond). When I didn't have the red suit on folks though I was a crazed surfer…

    Now, I'm a happy grey-haired/bearded-slowly-balding-I-don't-care-about-hair-guy…

  5. The comments are almost as funny as the original post. My hair has gone white around the front area. It is very strange. If the rest of my hair would turn that color, it would be beautiful but the rest of my hair is staging rebellion and I don’t know WHAT it is doing. Some areas are still the natural color, some not – I am trying to let it grow out so I can see what is happening… but I’m skeert!!! Loved this story that is far more important than even the gross national debt.

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