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.