I’ve noticed recently that an increasingly large number of the hairs on my 25-year-old head are stark white. I first discovered a white hair a good five years ago, and was pleased with it. I like white hair. I have no problem with it. At the moment, there aren’t many—far less than 1% of the hairs on my head—but there are considerably more than there were a few years ago, the last time that I checked. I haven’t done the math, so I don’t know at what point this will result in my having noticably-white hair or all-white hair, but I can’t imagine that it’s more than a decade or two away. Because of my strong desire for order and uniformity in my world, I found myself plucking white hairs from my scalp the other night. I stopped, somewhat surprised at what I was doing, before I realized that it wasn’t white that was the problem, it was just different that I sought to eradicate. I have very dark, near black hair (a consequence of the Italian heritage on my father’s side), so the white/black contrast is quite stark. Anyhow, any effort to remove white hairs is both inevitably futile and counter to my true desires, so I’ll attempt to curb my obsessive compulsive tendencies.
Not that it’s a binary matter, but better white than bald, I figure.