A Gray Haired Creep

I don’t know if it’s just me or if everyone has been experiencing this, but it seems like more and more I am being reminded of exactly how old I am getting. It seems like several times a week I will see something on TV or hear a song on the radio and they will say what year it is from and I will think, “That was how long ago?! Are you kidding me?!”

Sometimes I even say that out loud. I’ll admit it. Luckily I haven’t done it in public. Or maybe I have. Oh my God! Have I done that in public and not even realized it due to my advancing years? Have I crossed over to the sort of advanced age related idiosyncrasies like sneezing SO LOUD that it restarts your heart because it’s so worn out it stops when you sneeze and I haven’t even noticed it because my hearing is so bad?

Just kidding, my hearing is fine. What?

It’s quite a reality check when you realize that a very important event in your life happened over a decade ago. Are you kidding me? Do you know what is supposed to have happened a decade ago? Fifth grade. That’s it. That is the ONLY thing that should have happened that long ago. Everything else in life should have happened within the last 2 years because that’s how young people experience life.

College kids have no concept of the reality of age because everything that happens to them is new and fancy and full of fun and probably the very real threat of an STD. And I can honestly say that there is nothing wrong with that. As far as I’m concerned, everything should be new and fancy and full of fun and I’ll just bring a condom to make sure everything is the way it is supposed to be. Even the STD.

The best part of being young is (or should I say ‘was’) the fact that there are no consequences for most of your actions. Fail a class? “I’ll take it next semester.” Break up with your girlfriend/boyfriend? “I’ll get a new one in a couple of weeks.” Have a shitty summer vacation? “I’ll do something better next year. Maybe Cancun.”

But the next thing you know 12 summers have passed, you’ve never been to Cancun and you’re sitting at home on a Tuesday night, watching “The Biggest Loser” alone while eating a plain chicken breast and broccoli instead of being out at the bars enjoying San Felipe’s Cantina’s ½ price tequila shots on Tequila Tuesdays with bar food, the hot girl that worked there who wanted to do you but you never hooked up because one of you ALWAYS had a girlfriend or a boyfriend when the other was single, and at least 2 of your best friends in the world. Oh yeah, and tequila.

That was a really long sentence that mathematically adds up to this sentence: Why the hell do I even wake up in the mornings anymore? Honestly. What the hell am I doing being this old and this lame? A decade ago I was making more money, drinking a WHOLE lot more and thus having a WHOLE lot more fun, and I had no concept that someday I would wake up and be as old as I am.

I’ll be honest, though. I can’t really say I am depressed by the act of getting older, because mentally I feel just about as dumb as I was when I was 22, give or take some sparkles of age-induced brilliance every now and again (like when I finally figured out what securities trading is. Unfortunately I am getting old and I promptly forgot what I learned so I need to go look it up again just to make sure). Apart from how much it hurts to get out of bed sometimes, it’s really not too bad.

The worst part of it, to me at least, is the fact that I have gray hair creeping up into my facial area. I don’t like that one bit. Not one bit I say! Gray hair is for old people. Not almost 37-year-olds. It’s for like 55-year-olds and above. That stuff just does not fit into my lifestyle.

A couple of years ago I was at a pool party at my friend T-Rock’s house (just an FYI, eventually we are going to be too old for nicknames like that. Eventually Ice Cube is going to HAVE to change his name back to O’Shea Jackson because I don’t think anyone in their 40’s should be named after something you use to reduce swelling) and I was standing on the diving board, getting ready to unleash some mad diving skills upon the pool, when Zoom, a friend of mine whose nickname days are also numbered (can’t wait to see you half-stepping it with a walker and telling some lady at the nursing home, “They call me ZOOM, bitch!”) says to me, “Dude, what the hell is that on your chest?”

I look down, fully expecting an open wound, a tattoo I don’t remember getting or a large piece of barbed wire to be sticking out of my chest. Instead I come face to face with a large patch of gray chest hair where my black chest hair used to be. And the gray hair begins mocking me.

“What the hell is that?” I ask, a bit panicked.
“Is that gray hair?” asks Zoom.
“No, I think I was out in the sun too long and it bleached my chest hair blond,” I lie.
“Ha ha! That’s gray hair! Dude, you’re OLD!”

So I tried to cannonball him but I jackknifed my hip and almost drown because my leg didn’t work. That’ll teach him.

But he was right. It was gray hair. And that gray hair has steadily started the creep up from my chest into my goatee and into the sides of my hair. If I don’t shave for 3 days I can literally add 12 years to my face. That would have been awesome when I was 19, but it’s not so good when I’m already old enough to do anything worth getting old for.

Except maybe joining AARP. I hear they have some good tequila parties. But they probably don’t let anyone dance on the bar anymore. Not without a doctor’s note.

I think there is probably a box or two of Just For Men in my future. I’m lame, I know, but the gray hair belongs on someone else’s face, at least for 13 more years. Then I’ll take it back. Maybe.

B!