Two Decades of Grey - Middle School Part 2

When I was in 8th grade, I had a few friends already at the high school. One of them was part of the orchestra committee. The group was getting together to plan something, something which involved a trip to the grocery store. 

I don't remember how it was proposed to me to go meet a friend and hang out with them during their orchestra committee "planning meeting." I don't remember how I even got there or who drove. All I knew is I ended up at the local Kroger with a bunch of freshman and sophomore orchestra students.

I remember standing in an aisle, the group of us kind of in a circle formation, chatting. This one girl was looking my direction. Suddenly, she started approaching my right shoulder. My gaze instinctively followed her. She lifted up her arm and slowly reached for something. Then, she jolted her arm back and stepped backward, further away from me than she had been standing before. 

We looked at her, waiting for her explanation for the strange motions which had just occurred.

"I thought it was a bow hair."

I've never forgotten this line. How silly, right? None of us had an instrument with us. Why would there be a bow hair near my shoulder as I stood in the middle of a Kroger aisle with one friend and the rest mere acquaintances if not strangers. Of course, it wasn't a bow hair. She did not say what was implied when she realized what she had actually seen.

Bow hair or grey hair? I'll let you decide.

I wasn't dyeing my hair yet, but by 8th grade, I had learned which styles I could safely wear to school to hide all of the greys. It was limiting, but I was okay with it because it meant I could mind my business in peace and not have to field strange questions. Most of the time, I could almost forget they existed because nobody brought it up. The friends who knew didn't comment, and the rest of them didn't know. 

What I could not control were the moments when a strand would peek out unintentionally through the dark curtain of black and become visible. This is exactly what she saw that day in the aisle at Kroger. I remember feeling more alien and abnormal after this happened. A part of my memory remembers her shuddering as well as jolting back and stepping away. This may or may not be my mind making it up. But I didn't make up her words.

****

It's almost comical how illogical it was for her mind to have first thought I had a bow hair near me in the aisle of Kroger. But that only showed me how inconceivable it was for a 14-year-old girl to have grey hair in the minds of certain peers. And it made the truth sting that much more.