Gone Gray

While at a public function, I chanced to see a fellow construction worker I’d not seen in something approaching twenty years. As it so happens, these last few years are also the ones where people of my generation have seen their hair fade to gray. I must admit, my friend’s ashen hair knocked me sideways in the saddle when it came to recognizing him, but we quickly fell into a warm conversation once I approached him.

I’m an exception to the turning-gray regime. My hair washed itself gray more than twenty years early. Partway into the conversation with my old workmate, he said to me: “You haven’t changed. You look just the same as you did before.”

After our conversation, I considered what he’d said. Maybe turning gray prematurely advantaged me. I pre-aged in that regard.

—Mitchell Hegman