Well, there it was. I was doing my obligatory facial preparation that is required prior to going out into the world (lest I scare someone horribly and be sued for the emotional distress I have caused) and I saw it there prominently displayed in all its glory. Right there in the middle of my eyebrow – a terribly unruly and seemingly quite proud gray hair. I must say, I was taken aback.

It is not like gray hair is new to me. I have a family predisposition on both sides (maternal and paternal) for premature graying and have dealt with it in the hair on my head since my twenties. But this appearance of the proud and quite boisterous hair in my eyebrow – this was different as there was nothing premature about it.

Gray hair is right up there as one of the primary signs of aging. It is of course easily dealt with in most cases – you can shave it, dye it or pluck it. It occurs to me that at some point the hair that grows on other parts of my body will go gray and in addition to reminding me of the Sex in the City episode where Samantha gets a gray hair "down there" (her words – not mine) it makes me wonder how this will affect shaving my legs. Gray hair is not like hair with color. Oh no. It exercises that same confidence and attitude that comes with age and knowing yourself and does whatever the hell it wants. I can’t imagine what kind of excitement that will add to shaving. Corralling in those wiry gray hairs – oh my – what a vision.

At any rate, the gray hair that I was primarily concerned with at the time was the one that was debuting in my eyebrow. Actually, unless it had growth super powers it didn’t just suddenly appear, but was likely hiding under the eyebrows of color until it could make its entrance in its full glory.

Well, there was no way that I was going to allow the debutante to stand out there like the belle of the ball. Oh no, the gray hair was going to have a short-lived coming out party. So out came the tweezers and with one fell swoop and intense concentration I was able to remove two of my colored eyebrows, but the gray hair somehow managed to elude me. That just angered me, which I of course said out loud to the mirror and the offending gray hair. The second attempt was decidedly more focused and calculating, but yet again I came up with a tweezer full of colored hair and no gray hair even though I could swear I had it in the tweezer before I tugged. By that point I was cussing at the mirror and the offending gray hair and assuring the gray hair that I would emerge victorious.

On the third failed attempt I noted that I had created a noticeable bald spot in the eyebrow which only allowed the gray hair to be more proudly displayed in all its wiry, and so far, victorious glory. On the fourth attempt I pressed my nose to the mirror and put the full-force of my being into one last tug that finally resulted in the actual removal of the debutante from the ball (along with a couple more of her friends that were not gray).

When it was all said and done I walked away victorious but with a noticeable war wound in the form of a bald spot in my eyebrow. It was the equivalent of a terrorist hunt where one drops massive bombs and destroys towns just to kill one terrorist. While I might have questioned that approach in the past, I came to fully understand it having experienced the errant gray eyebrow hair that eluded me despite my sincere attempts to rid myself of it. Sometimes there must be casualties in a war with a vile enemy.

So there you have it – my first act of defiance in my body’s notation of aging in the new forty. I am not going to go down without a fight, even if it means I suffer some casualties. Who needs a full eyebrow anyway? “Not I”, said the victorious warrior who covered the damage-laden eyebrow with her bangs.

My tweezers are ready for the next coming out party. I am woman, hear me roar.

Day thirty-nine of the new forty – obla di obla da

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