It arrived the year I turned 30. My first gray hair, fluttering above my temple like a flag planted by an advancing army. I plucked it, examined it, and let it fall to the carpet. This was no concern of mine. Fresh out of a relationship that had spoken for my 20s, I was busily engaged in all the activities I had longed to do when I was shacked up in the suburbs, making weekend trips to homeware stores: living with friends in fashionable parts of the city, having serious conversations with unserious boys, experimenting with drugs for the first time. I felt young in a way that had so far eluded me and I was not about to let a single gray hair — an interloper, an outlier — spoil my party. I threw on my jacket, ran out the door, and forgot all about it.
