The Cure For Old Hair

Over the last year or two I began to develop what I initially thought was a severe case of dandruff in the area around my temples. The duration of this crisis was blessedly brief, because it turned out what I was seeing was actually the first foray into my sideheads by a colonizing force of gray hairs. (Technically it would be more accurate to describe them as silver, but given historical precedent it seems unlikely that anything on my body would somehow retain any kind of elegance or class, so I expect them to lose what little luster they have imminently.) My vanity is of the variety that so long as I keep the hair I have I’ve little preference as to its color; were it to remain plentiful but purple I would be perfectly pleased. Still, one cannot confront the traditional signs of aging without some sort of reflection on mortality: I grow old. My opportunities diminish with each passing moment. The ledger lists more yesterdays than tomorrows. Yadda yadda yadda, I’m gonna die, and until that happens I’m going to get regular reminders from my body that there’s a spot on the calendar with my name penciled in and I keep getting closer to it. That said, now that Science thinks it has discovered a cure for for faded follicles, would I ever do anything to reverse what is currently the most visible sign of my senescence? Fuck no! So long as I’m not going to be 20 again, which I am most certainly not, I would much prefer to give off the air of wisdom and experience which gray hair, fairly or unfairly, conveys. It is an established fact that, to young people, everyone over 35 looks pretty much the same, but those with salt-and-pepper by the ears possess a degree of authority lacking in the rest of the invisible old. So now all the nonsense that I utter with unshakable conviction will seem, to the impressionable youth, even more correct, and all because “massive oxidative stress” makes my head look like an old-timey movie. I’ll take it! At this point there’s so little left to grab hold of that you’ve got to appreciate what you can.

Photo by altafulla, via Shutterstock