My First Gray Hair

I was lucky this Paddy's Day, because I got out to enjoy my lunch of corn beef, cabbage, boiled potatoes, and a Guinness before my festive mood was crushed. I spotted one of those little short hairs that sticks up conspicuously, and if I'm truly honest with myself, it wasn't actually gray, but white. I found a white hair attached to my head.

At first, I was totally in denial. I thought it had to be a brain worm that had just finished chewing on my right frontal lobe and was coming up for air, but then I pulled it out and stared at it for a while. It did not appear to be alive. I pulled out another hair to compare to the white one, just to be sure, and appeared to be identical, except for the difference in pigment. I did this several times until I had a large patch of hair missing, kind of like a monk. Unfortunately, the only wig I own is a pink mullet that I got for Halloween about ten years ago.

So I called my mom and explained my crisis in detail. I told her how I recognize this as the first sign that my youth is officially over, yet I have no job, am single, and live in a 600 sq. foot apartment in which my only companion is a tiny mouse I've adopted and named Ben but who I know only loves me because I feed him Butterfingers. Mom laughed at me and hung up. Decided not to seek sympathy from my grandmother, who turned 97 that same day.

After writing about the inevitability of death in my journal, I ordered a large pizza, and watched 'Animal House,' which is my comfort movie.

That was three days ago. Depression still periodically rushes over me in a wave.

This story is kind of anticlimactic. Sorry.

All of these people are old now, and some of them are probably dead. Happy weekend!

'An Exercise in Maths and Physical Education' from the Carl Sagan Encyclopedia of Poetics

Lateral Illumination of Whatever we did Last Night

Consists in the Concentration of Light upon a certain large, phallic Vegetable.

The reflection is brought successively upon different portions of

Curvature and Smoothness, and in this manner, we obtain an Impression.