The silver lining at the end of my 30's

Earlier this evening, feeling a little restless and low on deodorant, I decided a little retail therapy was in order, so I headed over to my trusty neighborhood Target. While I was wandering around avoiding the practical purpose for my trip - shampoo and windshield washer fluid and the like - I found a dress that I liked. It was a relatively simple black dress that promised a "built-in slimming effect," but the best part was that it was my size AND it was on clearance! Bonus! So my happy li'l self waddled into the dressing room with my cute not-so-little black dress and tried it on. It fit and it looked as nice as a size 2X dress can look on this tub-o-lard, even with said built-in slimming effect which, incidentally, is created by sewing the fabric equivalent of a sausage casing inside. So while the dress appears to drape gracefully over one's, ahem, curves, it's really compressing the fat and crushing her internal organs in an armpit-to-thigh tube of spandex.

Standing in front of the mirror I thought, "hmm...this could be my new go-to dress. Or maybe I could just wear it to Nicole's wedding next month." I mean, it was only eight dollars, so even if I wore it once and threw it away afterward I'd have gotten my money's worth. Or if I died from the collapsed lungs caused by the slimming effect, I could be laid out in it. As I stood there mulling the possibilities of this versatile and tremendously discounted (and slimming!) garment, I caught a glimpse of my hair. Roots needed attention, to be sure, and in fact my last trip to Target had netted a box of Clairol Root Touch-Up which is still sitting in the bag on the dining room floor. I made a mental note to take care of that tomorrow morning. Taking one last look at myself, I checked to see if this dress's slimming effect camouflaged my back fat well enough (it didn't), and then...a glimmer. I stepped closer to the mirror to make sure I was just seeing things, and then again the light caught it, gleaming like a beacon on top of my head...a silver hair.

Silver. As in GRAY.

I promptly proceeded to isolate it, grab it, and yank it out by its root. Then just to be sure, I started weeding through the top of my head looking for more offenders when I found what I was looking for (but hoped I wouldn't find) - another one. This one took me a little longer to grab, though, and I started worrying that the fitting room attendant was going to wonder what was taking me so long to try on one dress. I pulled it out and my eye started to water (why does it always hurt the most when it's just ONE hair, anyway?) so I decided to stop looking for any more.

I've found what appeared to be gray hairs a couple times in the past, but I was never quite sure if they were gray or just lighter than the rest of my hair. In retrospect, I'm sure the latter was the case, because the ones I found this time were distinctly gray. There was a definite line between the gray and the red, almost as if the top inch and a half of the hair had been dipped in silver paint. There was no doubt about it this time around.

So how do I feel about this? Well...not great. I'm not handling this aging thing all that well, and "gracefully" is probably the last word one would use to describe my process. I have a tendency to forget that I'm hurtling mercilessly toward 40, and with this comes the natural progression of things like gray hair, wrinkles, and the urge to tell the generation behind mine that they're clueless. In my mind I'm still 19, but my body has chosen to tell me otherwise. I still go out, but my tolerance for booze - and large crowds of those who've overindulged in it - has waned considerably. There are times I stay out until 2:00 in the morning, but it takes me an entire day to fully recover - even if I've not had anything to drink. I spend most of my days on a college campus where I'm surrounded by kids half my age. Nothing like a 20-year-old size-2 hottie to remind you of what you're not - nor have ever been.

I guess what bothers me the most about it is that I feel like I'm still waiting for my life to start. I know...they say "you're only as young as you feel," and I can feel 19 as much as I want - until I find gray hairs while trying on a dress with a built-in girdle and have to face the college kid manning the fitting room on my way out. "They" also say that life begins at 40, but I don't want to wait that long. And so I've decided it begins tomorrow. With a root touch-up.