Salt and pepper, a speckled spray
even Gandalf the Grey
So many names to hurt, malign and injure
But whatever I’ve been called
I’m just grateful I’m not bald
And I thank the Lord I’m not a freaking ginger

For as long as it has mattered, grey hair has been part of my identity. Due to a strange genetic quirk that runs in my family, I started going grey in early high school. By university I was looking downright distinguished, and by thirty I was practically fifty. It’s never really been too much of an issue for me. In my brain I still have silky black hair, and it’s only when I look in a mirror that I even remember I’m some sort of walking pileous freak show.

That is, until now. My character for The Taming of the Shrew needs to have just such a crop of silky raven locks, and they need to be on the outside, not just in his “residual self-image” as Morpheus would have put it. So for the first time in recorded history, I’ve actually gone and dyed the grey out of my hair; at last merging my RSI with reality for once. Well… more or less.

Once I’d gone through all the surprisingly complicated chemistry involved in doing this to myself, I looked in the mirror and… laughed my head off for about five minutes. But now I’ve gotten used to it it seems black is indeed the new black.

Of course no sooner had I applied the permanent dye to my hair than we decided the character quirk and associated gag that I dyed it for weren’t working and we scrapped them. But that’s okay.

It’s nice to imagine what might have been.

Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs

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