confession:

rather than from pulpit, i choose to divulge from the blog:

[deep breath]

my name is meredith, and i have gray hairs.

17 in my last count.

whew, that feels much better.

my hair has been highlighted or dyed back to its natural color for the last year, so they've been nearly impossible to catch, but since i'm miss thrifty buns these days, i had let my roots grow a snitch, just avoiding the purchase of anything.  the roots of all but these 17 little devils are unnoticeable.  17.  gray.  hairs.

i choose to open this up now because last week someone was giving me a back scratch, they on the couch, i on the floor.  suddenly this person was combing through my hair with his fingers.  he said he was "checking for lice," you know, routine thing, but i'm suspicious, most suspicious that he had discovered the 17 gray hair roots, and was getting a kick out of it.

it started with 1 when i was 12.  i thought it was a blonde hair.  i got all excited, thinking maybe puberty, instead of handing me zits and other horrors, was going to just turn my hair from nearly black to a vibrant blonde.  after some careful analysis from female family members and girlfriends (boys still had cooties in them days), it was decidedly gray.  weird,  but whatever.  i didn't pluck it out because it was a good conversation topic in random times when it was noticeable.  

by the time i was 18 the gray hair had immaculately conceived 4 more little ones.  and then, at last count, it's a full blown polygamist family of 17.

this never bothered me, because a) obviously i wasn't old then, i'm not old now, even if my hair color juices have run dry in 17 little deposits, and b) my mom had the same thing happen so it must be something i inherited from her, and as long as i can blame my misfortunes on other people, i'm happy.

and
c) she won an academy award in all her grayness.  so although it's veiled by some feria, it's probably those 17 hairs that are awarding me ridiculous amounts of success.