that gray hairs could start appearing when one was merely in one’s very early 40’s, barely even starting one’s mature years.
That’s not change we can believe in, my friends.
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Our day (and night) jobs notwithstanding, the blog is about whatever we find interesting — science, to be sure, but also arts, politics, culture, technology, academia, and miscellaneous trivia. We have similar outlooks on many things, widely disparate opinions about others, and will do our best to keep the discourse reasonably elevated.
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September 1st, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Boohoo for you! I found my first gray hair at 17. And at 31, I’ve been covering the gray for years now.
September 1st, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Bah! I had salt ‘n’ pepper in my early twenties. One of my sisters went completely silver by 45. I just told people it was from thinking ::nudge:: lofty thoughts (i.e., the silver was frost)….
I should probably be embarrassed.
But I was a total dork.
September 1st, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Ditto what they said.
September 1st, 2008 at 1:23 pm
I too have plenty of friends who have had grey hairs already in their early twenties. Stop whining!
September 1st, 2008 at 1:43 pm
I’m in the same boat as the first four commenters. To add insult to injury, my uncle didn’t start getting noticeable white hairs until his early 60s.
September 1st, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Don’t worry, your not really old until the ear hair turns gray too.
September 1st, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Do like I do and tell people you’re reverting to blond.
September 1st, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Wait until you experience the inflationary growth of ear hair that is just beyond your event horizon.
September 1st, 2008 at 2:22 pm
I’m 30, I’ve got loads of grey hairs ! where’s the problem.. you’ve had a lucky run as far as I’m concenred !
September 1st, 2008 at 2:27 pm
If we’d have told you earlier then we’d have had to kill you (generational security - I’m sure you understand). Now that you’re officially _OLD_, I’m allowed to tell you the secret handshake. Unfortunately, I don’t remember it. Sorry.
-Danny
September 1st, 2008 at 2:31 pm
At least you have hair!
A fellow student, only one year my senior, started having buzzcuts because he was growing bald in his late twenties.
Thank GUT for my good genes. I’ve even grown progressively darker for the past decade or more.
September 1st, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Finally your smoking jacket, pocket-watch and monocle will look appropriate.
September 1st, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Well. some time or other, one must go up and dye.
^_^J.
September 1st, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Bah… I was pretty much a cue-ball when I turned 21. Now my beard is turning grey and I’m only 35.
September 1st, 2008 at 4:13 pm
We have the least sympathetic commenters on all the internets.
September 1st, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Like a few others, I’m 35 and have been fighting gray hair for years. Take my advice and don’t hide the gray…you’ll only make it worse
September 1st, 2008 at 4:43 pm
yeah Sean, I’m afraid I began getting them in grad school. sigh… no sympathy.
You’ve got hair too right? Plenty of guys just happy to have gray ones.
Michael
September 1st, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Other than all the usual “scientific” reasons for the loss of pigments in the hair (genetics, diet, stress, overall health, etc.), my personal pet theory (with absolutely zero evidence) is that the semioticity of the greying palate is enlightened wisdom. One of the genetic benefits of an American Indian ancestry is the long delay of enveloping grey hair on our heads, while most of the rest of us is hairless. Now that i am into my 60s and finally getting a good halo of greyness i am feeling oh so much wiser (as i keep telling myself).
September 1st, 2008 at 7:24 pm
My first grey hairs coincided with taking EM in grad school. Correlation … causation … blah, blah, but I always wonder whether the infamous Jackson text had anything to do with it.
September 1st, 2008 at 7:55 pm
I’m in my twenties and already finding gray hairs. My wife just loves pointing them out to me. But I point out I never had any until I married her.
September 1st, 2008 at 8:13 pm
I can still remember vividly the horror of seeing the first grey hair appear in my beard when I was in my thirties. Now about twenty five years later my beard has turned nearly totally grey. I reduce the impact of this by keeping it trimmed down to a designer stubble.
Fortunately I have hardly any grey in the hair on my head. However I am sure that future greying together with incipient thinning will result in me having my hair cut to a short stubble too. My hair has been cut shorter over the years, it makes me look more punk which I still am.
September 1st, 2008 at 8:42 pm
If it makes you feel better Sean, one of the things that attracted me to my husband was his salt and pepper hair. He’s got gray hair and a wife 10 years younger than him!
Chicks dig the silver.
September 1st, 2008 at 10:24 pm
This is good news, Sean! You now qualify to own a yacht, as well as for a lifetime prescription for Viagra. So, you can look forward to many happy “golden” years.
September 1st, 2008 at 11:58 pm
What did people do before blogs were invented?
September 2nd, 2008 at 5:48 am
sean; Would you rather sympathy or empathy?
I’m 27 and get a couple grays poking out here and there, but honestly I’d love it if the whole thing went full silver. I think I’d look good like that.
Be lucky, my younger brother is definitely working on the male-pattern-thinning stage at 25, and I think he’s been trying to stave it off for a few years now.
September 2nd, 2008 at 7:21 am
To dye or not to dye? I decided straight away that it was too much trouble to match the colors well enough, and that the wild laughs when someone noticed that I was dyeing my hair for vanity’s sake outweighed the odd laugh at the odd gray hairs. If you have to dye, I recommend Purple.
September 2nd, 2008 at 7:49 am
Sean, ma man, this is not the time to wallow in self-pity and listen to your dumbass commenters! Chicks dig this shit, bro! I shit you not. All you need now is a pimped out bright yellow van of L-O-V-E and before you know it, you will be compactifying some serious Calabi-Yaus. Day-um, you lucky dawg!!!! You!
September 2nd, 2008 at 8:00 am
My youngest daughter once tried to cheer me up: “Your hair is not all grey, dad. There is some white, too”.
September 2nd, 2008 at 8:01 am
I sympathize, Sean. Or as Bruce Willis said in Die Hard, “Welcome to the party, pal!”
September 2nd, 2008 at 8:42 am
Gray hair will make you look more distinguished and give you more street cred
September 2nd, 2008 at 9:28 am
Grey hair? At least you have hair. My hair line began its retreat when I was 16. Now at 31 I have had a clean-shaved scalp for years, my once thick blond hair a distant memory. On the plus side, I don’t have bad hair days, I have Gilette.
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:16 pm
At the ripe old age of 16 sir. thats when my first started coming in.
September 2nd, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Better gray than falling out. E. C. Olson of UCLA used to joke that as we get older our hairs burrow deeper into our skulls. If they meet gray matter they turn gray. If not, they fall out.
September 3rd, 2008 at 4:32 am
except that gray matter is actually of darker shades of pink. Only when we die it turns gray due to autolysis.
My grandpa got completely bald in his twenites, to his despair, yet it probably made him more respected at work in his younger years - and paradoxically attractive to women on lookout to marry someone: He was a solid, disciplined man with a responsible job in a bank - and his giant bald head with modest demeanor made him exactly look the part. So enjoy looking more distinguished, you never know what kind of unexpected benefits…
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:21 am
Ummm are you sure it’s just starting? My husband was shocked last week to find his
first gray hair. But he’s had them for years! He just never noticed before.
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Wait till your pubic hair starts coming out your ears and eyebrows!
September 4th, 2008 at 8:51 am
I thought my first gray hairs were normal hairs being bleached by shampoo, until the truth dawned when rinsing the shampoo off quicker and more thoroughly had no effect!
Your pic doesn’t show you wearing specs, but in ten years’ time, when you’re my age now, you’ll find you start needing longer arms to read!
Oh the joys of middle age..
September 5th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Like Sean, I started getting some white hair in my 40’s, but it remains mostly confined to the beard and sideburn. At 57 the muzzle is completely white but the mane remains brown. Even more distressing are the odd white hairs that pop out at random: on the eyelid and the side of the nose. Having to shave the tops of one’s ears just feels wrong.
It could be worse, though. My father had roughly the same pattern of graying, but he only grew out his beard once. He smoked so heavily that his moustache turned out bright yellow, so he shaved it, and for the duration of the experiment he looked like a whaling captain.
September 7th, 2008 at 6:09 am
Sean, you haven’t addressed the really _fun_ part of your early forties: The fact that at approxiately age 42, 5 months, 15 days (+/- 30 days), your arms will grow progressively shorter and shorter while reading– or at least, so it will seem.
Reading glasses/bifocals, it isn’t a good idea, its the LAW!
JC
September 7th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
That’s nothing. I got my first white hair when I was eleven.
September 7th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
at least you gots hair, dude.
September 8th, 2008 at 8:22 am
You are worried about grey hair?? What about the fact that we will all die some day????