White Hair

Every once in a while I feature a guest post and today I’d like to share with you one of my favorite writers, Carol Perkins. Carol lives in my hometown and besides being one of my former English teachers, she’s a close friend. She’s one of the warmest, funniest women I know and I love her dearly.  Here’s just one of her many stories….

White Hair

by Carol Perkins

When children speak, they don’t think of the consequences like most adults do.  So when Joseph, our grandson, told his Papa that he looked old, Guy knew it must be true.

We were eating our Pizza Hut spaghetti and Joseph looked left and then right and realized the elderly (in his eyes) surrounded him.  “Does it take a long time to get old?” he asked.

“Yes, a long time.  Why?”  He was probably thinking of himself and wasn’t in any hurry.

He looked at Guy and spoke as if Guy weren’t in the room.  “Papa is old, isn’t he?”  Guy nearly choked on his meatballs.

“What makes you think Papa is old?” I asked.

“Well, look at him!”  Joseph is five.  After I stopped laughing, I had to come back with a little sassy dig, confident that he caught on that being called “old” was not a positive.

“Do I look old?”

He hesitated, looked at me and said, “No, just Papa.”  Bless his heart.

Guy’s hair has been gray and edging toward white since he was thirty.  I once wanted him to dye it, but he would not.  He had an uncle who dyed his hair black and there were always streaks running down the back of his neck the next day. Guy wasn’t going that route.

Guy has had two blows to his ego in the last few months. Ironically, our good friend Connie was visiting from Louisville and we were sitting on the couch talking about politics when out of the blue and eyeballed Guy and said, “Have you thought about dying your hair?”  She is blunt that way.

“Why would I want to do that?”  I suspected the answer.

“I was looking for you all in the restaurant the other day and I saw this white headed man across the way and when I realized it was you, I was taken aback because I saw this person as a much older man.”  That is what men love to hear; pumps up their ego!  “You would look so much younger if you would put a little of that stuff on your hair that tints it.”

“What do I care about how I look?  I AM an old man.”  She continued her useless persuasion until he said he would think about it.  I knew he had thought all he was going to think, but that didn’t stop me from discussing his hair with my hairdresser.

“Well, there is something I use on men that tints the hair without making an obvious change.  Have him come to the shop and I’ll see what I think.”  I doubted Guy would go, but I gave him the information.

“Does my hair bother you?”  In other words, what is the big deal? I had to admit that it didn’t, but I am all about doing whatever to improve one’s hair color.  I have had many transformations.

“I am not going to dye my hair.  I would feel like a fool running around town white haired one day and brown the next.  That is just not going to happen.”

Frankly, I think he looks quite distinguished, and I don’t mind at all looking like the younger woman (in Joseph’s eyes) riding beside him to get our senior citizen coffee at McDonald’s.