We are sitting at the wedding reception, enjoying the meal, when my self-definition took hard blow. The conversation wandered from topic to topic, as conversations do, and, at some point, made it around to gray hair. There was some back and forth as the young people near us starting commenting on how they were starting to see gray hairs.
Me? I’ve had gray for a long time. My mental image of myself is “I am graying”. As in, I still have a lot more gray to go. My dad has an awesome head of silver hair and I hope & expect to get there some day. I am gray, there is no doubt.
So when one of the young people (who shall remain nameless) looked at me and asked,”How long have you been fully silver?”–I was at a loss for words. I’m not fully silver. But here was someone who thought I was. And it was someone whose opinion I hold in high regard, so I couldn’t just dismiss it as the ramblings of a young punk.
After gaping like a fish out of water for far too long, I tentatively offered that I didn’t think I was fully silver. There was much laughter and embarrassment.
Like most of my posts, this was several days ago. I’ve been thinking about my hair far too much since then.
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