I found my first grey hair yesterday.

I was looking at how bushy and out of control my sideburns were when I noticed a hair that looked out of place. It was way too lightly-colored to be one of my dark-beardy hairs. Upon closer examination it looked to be grey.

My heart began to thump in my chest.

“What the FUCK!” I said aloud, startling the other men in the Comcast restroom.

I got a little closer to the mirror and began to run the hair between my thumb and forefinger, thinking there may be something on it… yeah, it’s dirty, that’s it.

A sincere sense of dread came over me as I pondered this milestone in my life. Does this mean that I’m officially old? I mean, I’m going to be 36 later this month, and I knew I was getting up there. But with the appearance of this fucking grey hair I’m afraid that I might be over the hill.

I panicked.

So I plucked the fucking thing out. I held it closer to my eye to make sure that it was, indeed, a motherfucking cocksucking grey hair.

I spent the next hour examining the hair in different shades of light. I took it outside to look at it in the sun. I held it close to my computer monitor. Next to my cell phone’s LCD light. Next the window on the other side of the building. Under the light on my desk. In the break room.

I showed it to my co-workers, who promptly laughed at me. I showed it to Miriam, who also laughed at me.

Sigh.

This thing has really affected me. I’ve been fighting some irrational thoughts since yesterday. For example, I want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane now. I want to parachute. I also want to buy a motorcycle and ride it way too fast for my own good. And I’ve considered buying various dyes for my hair and beard.

Bah, what’s the matter with me?

Grey is supposed to be distinguished, or something, right? Right? RIGHT?

“I will get by, I will survive”

That’s right, it’s been four years. And it’s been a wild ride.

My most productive month was February 2004 with 26 blog entries. My weakest months were July 2004, April 2007, and June 2007 with only two blog entries each.

402 posts and 560 comments. 67 photo albums.

Countless web designs and header images.

I started with manually editing an html file on the good ol’ snowcrash.org server. Then I moved on to Blogger. I soon grew tired of the limitations of Blogger and installed Movable Type on snowcrash.org and registered the teebiss.com domain, graciously hosted by Smitty and the halibut crew. After a couple of years wrestling with Movable Type I moved on to WordPress and a new webhost. WordPress has been a dream to work with.

Chico. College. Hayward. Unemployment. My mother’s death. Despair. Comcast. Miriam. Brentwood. Happiness at last.

Maybe Hippocleides *does* care, after all?

Jazz on my little transistor radio in the window. Smoke rising from an old soup can ashtray. Wild Berry Zinger tea that my mom bought me. The cool ocean breeze. Freedom. Goodbye, Navy. Hello, CSULB. Rushing TKE. Surfing in the morning before school. Working at Moose McGillycuddy’s. Sitting on the front stoop with Dan. Breakfast at The Potholder. Drinking my first cafe latte. Cigar shops on every corner. Z-pizza. 2nd street. Playing Doom on my first PC. Sleeping on Andy’s couch for two months. Jogging on Seal Beach. Surfing the rivermouth until well after dark. Reading Bukowski. Watching the freaks line up at The Library after midnight. Family reunion in Strawberry. Getting drunk with my cousins. Begging Dave to move to SoCal. Monica sleeping on my kitchen floor with Critter. Falling asleep in the sun on the lawn in my apartment complex’ back yard. Making new friends. Making new memories. Life.