The Best Kept Secret Blog - The Hair
I'm obsessing about the hair.
No, not the shoulder-length, long-layered, subtly high- and low-lighted coif that I currently sport.
I'm talking about "the" hair. I'm embarrassed to share this but I've grown one on the inside corner of my eye, right next to my nose.
It's not supposed to be there.
I just woke up one morning and bang, there it was. At first I thought it was some errant mascara or a little something left over from a sound night of sleep. But when rubbing and washing couldn't make the thing budge, I had a closer look.
And there it was. A hair.
It's been with me for more than a month now but every morning I check the mirror, hoping that somehow, miraculously, the thing's disappeared.
Some of you might wonder why it bothers me so. Well of course it bugs me and I'll tell you why.
Apart from the fact that all and sundry might question my personal grooming habits, it's just one more example of the strange things that happen each year as we age.
It starts with grey hair. At first there's shock upon finding the first silver strand mixed in among the brown.
"Is that a grey hair?" we wonder, partly surprised but more often amused. As if there's been some sort of mistake and, despite this strange freak of nature, once we pluck it, there will never be more.
But of course there are more and one day we realize that, if we were to pluck all the grey hairs from our head, we'd be more bald than Kojak. We acquiesce and root touch-ups become the new norm.
Perhaps what I resent most is the random and unpredictable nature of the whole thing. You never know when and where something is going to give or show up.
I've mentioned before my good friend MJ who spent 10 minutes washing a brown spot on her temple after arriving home from the hair dresser. "I thought it was hair dye but after ten minutes of scrubbing realized it was an age spot."
Is this what they mean by growing old gracefully? Surrendering to the little oddities that life throws our way? Or are we better served by fighting it tooth and nail?
I, for example, often ponder what to do about the hair. I've thought about plucking but frankly I'm scared it will hurt. And at the end of the day, I know it'll grow back.
No, I've decided that acceptance is key. And I'm trying to be strong and brace myself for whatever comes next - chin hairs, bat-wing arms or maybe elastic waste pants. At the end of the day I'm still me inside and there's much more to life than worrying about these things.
But just for the record, should we meet over lunch or a coffee one day, my left eye is my good one.
