An ATS Demographics Question

The following question is a serious and important question about the demographics of ATS.

Periodically, here on ATS, we see posts lamenting the "old days on ATS". One such post was circulating just yesterday. I responded to that post much the same as I do other ones like it. However, after my initial response I started to do some deeper thinking on the matter and as I did so I was reminded of something...

A while back I was sitting on the couch watching TV with the wife. I don't watch much TV (at all), so it was a notable occasion. As I sat there I kept feeling this tickling sensation on the top of my left ear. I couldn't figure out what it was. It was like there was something there, but there wasn't anything there...and it was buggin' me! I kept brushing my ear off like there was something on it. Finally, I decided to do a closer inspection on the top of my ear to see what was bugging me. As I moved my fingers slowly over the top of my ear I felt it. It was a hair tickling the top of my ear. So I grabbed a hold of it thinking it was a rogue hair from my scalp, but it wasn't. It was attached to the top of my ear!! OMG!

I was mortified! I immediately told my wife about my discovery. I had a hair growing on my ear!! It wasn't a bad hair, or a dirty hair, it was just a single really fine, but long, hair. I was immediately alarmed to the max and told my wife as much. She said something really curious to me. She said..."You're just getting old, Hon! That's what happens when people grow older, they get hairs growing on their ears."

Well, color me STUNNED! No one ever told me this! My whole social status had just fast forwarded about a century with this revelation. I was now officially an...'OLD GEEZER'! That cute girl winking at me in the grocery store wasn't winking at me cuz she thought I was 'hot', she was winking at me like she would to her elderly gramps at Sunday supper. Dammit!

I immediately yanked out said hair, and I profusely denied that hairs were growing on my ears. But then I found another one. Double-dammit! I started panicking. I mean, I'm not ready to try to find socks which match my Depends undergarments! This simply will NOT do!

My wife got me down off the ceiling (as she usually does), and told me it would be okay; it wasn't the end of the world (yet). And in that moment I realized something. That fine grey hair on my ear came with something else, it came with a lifetime of experience and changes. Times had changed dramatically since that empty pit in my stomach feeling when my Mom dropped me off at kindergarten that first day. Times had changed since that first day I woke up and realized there would be no more High School. Times changed since the reality of moving out of my home town hit me. Times change, and we get older. But with all those passing years comes a richness of life, knowledge and experience.

Maybe that thin grey hair wasn't so bad after all.

Times change. People change. The internet changes. And society changes. We can either choose to roll with those changes, or we can stay stuck at some point in the past.

So I ask you this, ATS...how many of you here have hairs growing on your ears???

Oh man.

Let me tell you.

I was in the mirror using my beard trimmer. My wife came in...no big deal...I kept on...then i noticed a hair on my ear, near the lobe, just under, but about an inch long!

I said, "damn!" what the f is that?

She said, "oh that's Steve".

Mhm.

Apparently I've had an inch long hair growing out of my ear for years.

Now I know.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Times change. People change. The internet changes. And society changes. We can either choose to roll with those changes, or we can stay stuck at some point in the past.

I too am getting older and yeah have hairs growing out of my ears and nose and my eyebrows are going into overdrive but just like lamenting the old days on ATS I see no reason to stop complaining ... I see it as my right as I move from a middle aged man to grumpy old git.

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Times change. People change. The internet changes. And society changes. We can either choose to roll with those changes, or we can stay stuck at some point in the past.

I too am getting older and yeah have hairs growing out of my ears and nose and my eyebrows are going into overdrive but just like lamenting the old days on ATS I see no reason to stop complaining ... I see it as my right as I move from a middle aged man to grumpy old git.

Okay. So, if you're done complaining, kindly...GET OFF MY LAWN!!

Oh, and please don't misinterpret my OP as suggesting I will never complain about things. I most certainly will. However, I will try to corral those complaints into a current and forward looking posture. Well, for the most part.

But seriously...GET OFF MY LAWN!! Like, NOW!

I too am in the hair on ears club. My maintenance routine seems to keep getting longer.

Don't get me started in my eye brows.

Yikes.

a reply to: Jefferton

Yeah, like when you put your sunglasses on and there's something in your eye, but when you take them off it's gone. And you look at your sunglasses like 50 times and find nothing. Then you look in the mirror and there's this 2" long rogue eyebrow hair which grew in overnight which needs to be snipped else your sunglasses push it in your eye. Like that?

Yep, BTDT too! LOL!

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

I feel ya. My wife has always adored "salt and pepper" hair, and I now constantly catch her staring at me with a twinkle in her eye, locked on to my grays. And I don't even have kids!

Sometimes my 10 year old daughter stares at me. Intently.

I'm usually plucking out an eyebrow that is annoying me.

She jumps every time...and continues staring.

I'm probably not the world's best dad. But I think I'm ok.

What a topic ...

I’ve had an interesting opaque type hair growing out of the left side of the tip of my nose since I was in my twenties. Hard to see except when the sun shine rights on it and you notice it looking down. I’ve been periodically plucking it for years.

Since I turned fifty, I’ve had a black one grow out of my right cheek ( face 😏).. and it too gets periodically plucked.

I also have in the last years acquired two more growing out of my chin. Black as well .. so easy to spot for removal.

What I have started getting really curious about is when and how fast these hairs grow. I don’t think they grow like regular hairs. Mine seem to sprout so quickly ..can get long quickly if left unplucked. I started thinking maybe these quick hair sprouts had something to do with full moon and the increase in whatever with that.

Still monitoring 😆. I’ll let you know my end results and theories. If anyone has any theories on this please feel free to pitch in.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Am 73 year old.

I've had hairs growing out of the top of my ears for decades. Annoying. Use the trimmer to get them or pull them out.

I don't care what they look like, they are just annoying outliers.

And an off-topic.

Are you still playing guitar? I haven't forgot. You said you would persist. With my depressing threads...you have my hope. Are you playing?

a reply to: Sheye

They grow overnight!

Personally, I think their growth speed is measured in mph, not inches per year. And, none of them are well behaved like other hairs. They shoot straight out, or at some other crazy angle.

Heh, for a while I thought I was gonna' have to shave off my eyebrows!! LOL!

a reply to: Admitted

I'm not sure I'd call it "playing" just yet!

More like..."annoying people with the guitar" would be more accurate.

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
a reply to: Admitted

I'm not sure I'd call it "playing" just yet!

More like..."annoying people with the guitar" would be more accurate.

That's fantastic!

Whenever people ask or inquire if I play guitar, I say I play with it.

Stay annoying, if you enjoy it. Keep working at the parts that will allow you to play what you enjoy.

thanks for responding to me.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

I haven't found any random hairs growing anywhere... yet... but the older I get, the more I look like my grandmother, and the more I like it. There is a wondrous sense of freedom that comes with growing older, as you learn what really matters and what doesn't (usually the hard way!), and you can re-focus accordingly. I don't worry about the outward signs of aging. I've known much joy and much heartbreak and everything in between. I have earned every wrinkle and gray hair by living my life to fullest.

“Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, “Wow what a ride!”

No ear hairs yet. . or that I have noticed let me find a mirror. My beard on the other hand is now more gray than black..... And dont get me started on my nose hair Oi. I'm at the awkward time In life where my mind thinks I'm still 18, my body thinks I'm 60 and my kids ask if I knew Jesus....

a reply to: Boadicea

I love that Hunter S Thompson quote. Unfortunately, he apparently got tired of skidding...

This is to goddam funny man.....this Thread itself....lol..LMAO….because of this wee little factoid.

For the Love of Murphy...I thought it was only me!!!

Jeepers....I was recently getting a haircut ...at a nice Salon....and when the Technician was finished the job she held up a nice silver mirror and began navigating around my chair showing me how perfect her work was...all was going perfectly...until......oh my god....I SAW A STRAY HAIR SHE HAD SOMEHOW MISSED STICKING WAYYYYOUT FROM THE SIDE OF MY HEAD @ ear level...….I had no god given idea that it could in any way shape or form be an Ear-Hair....I was simply not a possibility to me......so in a very courteous kind manner I pointed out to her that she had done a wonderful job all-round except for one single little hair that she had missed on the side of my head.

I was Fuc%$#@ MORTIFIED to be looking in that big mirror at her eyes as she calmly informed me that she had in fact not missed a hair at all....whereupon she left me with a moments pause that seemed like an hour….I just didn't clue in...till she nicely and politely simply said it is your Ear Hair...….I dam near fainted...but I collected myself and in a very cool and controlled voice I asked her if I was a Fankenstein or if this was common...she said it was common ...so I asked her if it was also common for her to clip those little buggers off for people?...whereupon she said yes it is quite common for her to do this task....I am old she was young I was the most embarrassed ever in my life.... with one swift motion she clipped that monster down to size.

Horrifying it was...and definitely a Graduation of sorts...because when you look you find more then you look more and realise you have Rouge-Hairs everywhere some of massive lengths ..just wait till you find an Eye-Brow that is 2-1/2 inches long and still growing strong tickeling your nose....lol...lol.

This is the first time in a decade I have been Grounded by ATS...lol....I really didn't need this...lol.

a reply to: sine.nomine

Thank you -- I forgot to attribute the quote!

Hunter S. Thompson was both an inspiration and an enigma to me. In the final analysis, he was just another perfectly imperfect being like the rest of us. But he lived and died on his own terms. I can respect that -- for better AND worse.