I just pulled out a hair.

Here's the thing, though...it was a gray hair. And it was in my ear, on the outside of the lobe, just about a the level of the ear canal. I pulled it, expecting, for all the world, nothing more than a stray blondish strand, or perhaps one of the odd reddish twisted locks that seem to have crept up beyond my hairline.

But no...a few quick pulls with a tweezer, and there it was, glinting silver on the tip of my finger; a sign of my body's hopefully slow, but decidely sure, breakdown. The progress toward an inevitable end.

Yes, my first gray hair. And hopefully not my last.