Finding The First Gray Strand

I got my first gray hair before I got my period.

Driving in the car one day in 1975, my dad looked over at me while stopped at a stoplight and saw a white hair glistening on my head.

     “Let me see your head,” he said and I leaned toward him.

     “You have a gray hair!” he exclaimed, trying to isolate it.

     “What?!” I said.

He gently pulled the long strand into my view and I reached up to take it, staring at the bright white hair. My dad was delighted. Neither one of us yanked it out.

My father, then 43, had nearly all white hair and I remember the discovery of my gray hair at age thirteen as being a positive one for both of us. I thought of the arrival of gray hair as a connection to my Irish side; my father’s side. I thought it was cool to have a gray hair so young. It was certainly the kind of thing that got kids to ooh and ahh in Jr. High. (Remember, this is a time when seeming mature was a big deal, when kids smoke to look older and boys try to grow those wispy first mustaches.) I didn’t smoke — I didn’t even wear a bra yet. That single gray hair was a nice novelty.

My dad died in 2007 and when I picture him, I always see him with a thick head of wavy white hair. It's quite possible that now, at age 56, mine is that way too.  

I'm about to find out.