Friday's Unscientific Poll: Grey

[nanila]

Poll #22494 Grey

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 31

I felt old when I found my

First grey hair on the crown of my head
6 (19.4%)

First grey hair on my face (e.g. eyebrows, mustache, beard)
3 (9.7%)

First grey hair on my ears
2 (6.5%)

First grey hair on my torso
2 (6.5%)

First grey pube
6 (19.4%)

Picture in the attic
18 (58.1%)

(This post brought to you by finding my first grey pube a couple of weeks ago. You’re welcome!)

Comments

[recessional]

None of the above: when I realized that people who weren't alive for 9/11 can now vote.

[jtthomas]

First gray on my head, aged 17. And nobody else in my family has gone gray until their sixties.

[angelofthenorth]

I still don't have any grey hair!

[nanila]

No picture in the attic either? :)

[angelofthenorth]

It's stuck to a broken chest of drawers up there.

[niqaeli]

Grey/white hair doesn’t make me feel old, though? I think i got my first visible ones at 24, and was frankly baffled at one of my in-laws being all gleefully teasing about it because... okay? yes? it’s a grey hair? That’s a thing that does, in fact, happen?

Maybe I’ll feel different when it all goes grey/white, but in the meantime everything that makes me feel painfully old is existential. >_>

[forthwritten]

I have no grey hairs and seem to be taking after my mum, who at nearly 70 still only has a sprinkling of grey hairs.

[hilarita]

Likewise. In fact, my mother had no grey hairs aged 71. We just don't look even close to our age.

[pbristow]

All of the above.

Also, on my last day at middle school. (I spent most of a lunchtime staring around the place in nostalgia, while my friend Daniel from two years below muttered impatiently about me being no fun today.)

Also, on finding my first *wiry* hairs erupting sideways from my ears, long before any turned grey. I mean, like... "Ear pubes"?!? No-one ever warned me that could be a thing! =:oO

[pbristow]

Actually, slight amendment: My first hints of silver anywhere on my head delighted me: They were corner-of-the-mouth beard highlights, just like the ones in Roger Delgado's beard (See illustration). =:o}

You can sort of see the left one in my "boss-eyed" icon (from about 13/14 years ago), though by then they were about to be swallowed by the big white central chin-blob that appeared next.

[redbird]

I found my first white hair (on top of my head) in my twenties, and was pleased to be getting my maternal grandmother's white hair instead of gray from the other side of my family.

My first set of bifocals, on the other hand...

[angrboda]

My first set of bifocals, on the other hand...

This. Old and also poor, since they cost three times as much as I'd previously paid for new glasses.

[chickenfeet]

I developed a white streak in my beard in my 20s which made me look like a demented badger so I shaved it off.

[omnipotent]

None of the above--I felt "old" when I noticed I no longer could walk as quickly as I once could and that my knees feel stiff more often. I know being tall is hard on one's knees, but I didn't imagine it would be quite like this.

Alternatively, perhaps I should take up running.

[angrboda]

I've got extremely fine hair and it's ginger so any white up there is difficult to see unless the light is just so and you're squinting a bit. I had white pubes long before I admitted to probably having white hairs. :)

None of these things made me feel old, though. Meeting adults and discovering I remember the year they were born, however... I hope this is something that eventually becomes old news.

[ironed_orchid]

It took me forever to get grey hairs and I love them all.

[ironed_orchid]

I felt old when I met a young but adult person who had a Kurt Cobain poster in her room but who was born the year he died.

[cmcmck]

Body image works slightly differently for me but I'll admit to colouring my (grey) hair. :o)

[castiron]

None of these things make me feel old. I knew someone who was getting gray hairs when she was 15 (it ran in her family -- very dark hair that went silver young -- and she was looking forward to how it'd look when it was done), which has skewed my associations with gray hair.

What makes me feel old? Realizing that Depeche Mode's music is older now than the Beatles' music was when I first heard Depeche Mode.

[castiron]

Okay, what's really making me feel old now? Realizing that the LOTR movies are going to be 20 years old in a few years, and that Elijah Wood was younger when Fellowship of the Ring was filmed than my oldest child is today.

[antisoppist]

I got my first grey hair at 19 and these days am more perplexed by how I have ended up the least grey of my sisters so far (I am the oldest). Having to get reading glasses on the other hand...

[azurelunatic]

Realizing that my child* is 23 is making me feel old.

* Adopted.


The hair, somewhat less: I got my first few grey hairs in high school and figured I was going to be completely silver by 35 like my dad. Instead I'm nearly 40 and it's still barely visible (under the blue).

[shirou]

You don't have an option for losing hair, but that's what makes me feel old. I'm thankful for all the hairs that remain on my head, even the grey ones.

[miss_s_b]

I have probably got grey hairs now. But I wouldn't know.

I first felt old... reasonably recently, actually, when I worked out that latest partner is only just not-in-the-creepy-zone in age - you know the whole half your age plus seven thing? I'm 41, which makes my cut off point 27.5, and he's 28...

And then I got diagnosed with arthritis in my knees. So, it's like, old has hit me suddenly and now I'm REALLY old?

[ayebydan]

My hair remains dark but I feel old as balls anyway because my joints all creek. I was at work on Friday and had put something on the low shelf and went to get up and my knees just noped out. lol

[lilysea]

None of the above. I felt old when I turned 40.