I have no gray hair stories, except that I think gray hair is very, very sexy.

Welcome!

I started at 17.

I was in my mid 20's too when I first found a gray hair, but I picked it out because I wasn't sure whether it was gray or blond. My paternal grandfather's family all had headfulls of pure white hair, but neither my dad nor uncle inherited it--my father went mousey and my uncle's is still mostly brown--and I don't think I did either. Chupahija always said my brother inherited Grampa's hair, but I don't think so, since he's balding.

I found my first grey hair the morning after my wedding. I was 31. I looked in the mirror at the hotel we were staying in and saw what looked like a piece of wire growing out of my head. Arrrgggh!! By the time I divorced him, I had many, many more.

My parents are both grey. I started going grey in my early 20s, but I have loads of hair (as hair dressers keep telling me). Annoyingly, my younger siblings have almost no grey hair and they're not that much younger than me.

I started slowly, in my 30's. Being tall, I could get away with some gray on top because hardly anyone can see the top of my head unless I'm sitting down. Now, unfortunately, it's spread and I have to hit the Just For Men everytime I get a haircut.

I found a clump of gray hair on the right side of my head when I was 14 (actually, it was found by someone who was braiding my hair for a show, with shrieks of "OH MY GOD!!!"). Fortunately that was it for a long long time.

But now at 42, I've got lots and lots of gray, and I don't really like it, so I've been dyeing it for several years now ("dark warm brown"). It's mostly around the part in my hair -- when I finally decide to go gray I'm going to have this ever-widening skunk stripe going across the top of my head. *sigh* So I'll probably have to frost my hair to avoid looking like a skunk until all the real gray settles in.

I started going gray in high school. When I was bent over the sink dying my hair black or purple or red, I would occasionally notice a wiry white strand poking up.

I kept coloring my hair, although more sedate shades, into my late twenties. My hair grows fast, so I found myself spending two evenings a month in my oldest clothes, a ratty towel draped around my shoulders, as I touched up my roots.

One Friday evening a couple of weeks after the death of my then-partner, I looked at myself in the mirror: alone, in miserable stained clothes, besmeared and bedraggled, and I thought Life is too short for this.

That's the last time I colored my hair. I was just sick of taking time from my life, my actual life, to cover up something that was part of me. Ten years later, at 37, I have the hair of a woman twice my age: gray and steel and white laced together, struck through with bits of brown and auburn.

I love it.

I love how easy it is. I love how it looks against my skin. I love how it distinguishes me in a crowd. I love the half-conspiratorial looks I get from other gray-haired women. (Once in a while, a white-tressed stranger will walk up to me in the market or the coffeehouse or on the street, and say, "I love your hair." I answer, "I love yours.") I love that my partner thinks it's sexy. (An ex- once confided that he had developed an automatic erotic response to hair like mine.)

I love that it's me.

I'm the youngest woman in my circle of old friends, and the only one who doesn't cover her gray. I can see that my friends look and feel gorgeous, and good for them! I look and feel gorgeous, too, and good for me!

I started going grey in my late 20's. Also, I am the only one in the family to have inherited my maternal grandfather's head of thick hair.

My wife is totally grey also.

I see a woman on the street with grey hair, and I think it's sexy, usually. . .but that's just me maybe.

I started getting gray hair in my early twenties. I'm not salt & pepper yet, but there's a lot of visible white in my beard. I'm the spitting image of my father, who, at 60, is almost completely white haired now. Better that than taking after my moms side where the men tend to be bald as beagles by 40.

I take after my father, and am quickly going bald instead of getting any gray hair. My little brother, on the other hand, takes after my mother, and despite being only in high school, is already going gray.

I got my first gray in college, and added a bunch more individual strands my first year out of college. It stayed like that until this last year, and now it seems that once I turned 30 they started multiplying much more rapidly. The early ones were white and rather pretty; the new ones tend more toward gray and so are a bit more noticeable.

I haven't decided what, if anything, to do about it, but Elsa's post gives me faith that I can probably leave it (which is my preference) and not feel like I've "let myself go." (What a horrid phrase.)

I'm 41 on the 9th and I have red hair so you can't see the grey in it. Imagine my surprise when I got my hair cut and saw all the grey hair that had fallen in stark relief against the black tarp they put over my shoulders.

My old tai chi teacher once had a large, round lock of hair fall out on the back of his head. It grew back in pure white. He always was a little... supernatural.

I just went through a five hour ordeal of lowlights and highlights and rediscovering my natural color, designed so that my gray can now all grow in and be left alone, because I too have grown tired of dying my hair. According to the hairdressers, I don't really have that much for 43, although it looks like a ton to me. It's all in the front though - I seem to have developed a lock of white just at my forehead.

My great aunt Claire's hair went completely white overnight when she was in her teens - either during scarlet fever or the influenze epidemic of 1918, noone is quite sure. She went on & was a model in the 1920s, white hair, flapper dresses: she was amazing looking.

I'm the last among my sisters to go salt and pepper, yet they still ask me (after a lifetime of my curly hair) if I *curl* my hair. I variously answer, "No, but I do color it" or "My dad was black".

When I was younger, I used to bleach a blonde streak into my dyed-black hair. Now that I've hit my thirties, there's a streak of pure white hair exactly where the blonde streak used to be. I can't believe all the money I'm saving at the hairdresser's!

I noticed my first gray hair not long after the birth of my first son. At the same time I noticed a change in my general hair color-from medium reddish brown to dark, plain brown. I used to color occasionally, but now I've settled on a nice medium auburn that I get so many compliments on. I hope someday to have the pure-white hair like my great aunt. I do love salt-and-pepper/gray hair on others.

I found my first grey(actually, they're more silvery) hair at 17. I started colouring my hair in my early 20s, but not for the normal reasons. I have, overall, blah brown hair (there is blonde and red mixed in but it doesn't make much of a show). I quit colouring it over a year ago (two years?) in part due to wanting to see how much silver was in it and also because I was tired of doing it. As Elsa said - life is too short.

I don't know if it could be called salt and pepper yet, but it's pretty light out in the sun. The silver hairs are fairly well distributed except for a good concentration of them at my temples. I'm growing my hair longer and when I do that the hair from my temples kinda turns into corkscrew curls. I can't wait to see what it looks like when it gets longer.

One of my brother's has brown hair as well, well, what's left of it, and it's going silver as well (he keeps it shaved really short and it looks really nice on him). My other three brother's have blond hair. I have noticed, however, my oldest blond brother has quite a bit of white hair at his temples.

My hair is going silver rather than grey as well. The silver hairs are flattish to boot so they look like really narrow tinsel. Although the rate has really picked up the last few years I was getting the odd one before I needed to shave.

If I loose a sequin here and there
More salt than pepper in my hair
Can I rely on you
When all the songs are through
To be for me the everthere, everthere

The Everthere by Elbow. Top band, top tune.

Thank you Elsa, for a great comment!

I have some white hairs on the crown of my head. I think they're getting easier to spot. My mother would complain that she went gray young, and I've been wondering if I'd have the courage not to cover it when it happened. My mother has always dyed her hair.

My father has been salt-and-pepper (but mostly black) for decades, and retired a few years ago. Maybe I will inherit that.