Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord; because of these same detestable practices the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you.

• Deuteronomy 18:10-12

“You shall have no other gods before me.

• Deuteronomy 5:7

The gray-haired and the aged are on our side, men even older than your father.

• Job 15:10

Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.

• Isaiah 46:4

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.

• Hosea 7:9

The New Boilerplate

My wife filled a small book with “Angel” on the cover.  It was hidden with a box of crafting things.  On 18 July 2025, I thought I had posted the last of these.  But this little angel book held a prayer, followed by 71 quotes.  So, the “with a little help” series is back in business for a while.  And it will be fun for me.  She did not attribute any of the quotes.  The first quote was from James A. Garfield, the 20^th president of the USA.  The next one was disputed, with some thinking it originated with Teddy Roosevelt and others saying Fred Astaire.  After the prayer, these might be on the lighter side.

Her quote

“Pluck one grey hair out, three more will come to its funeral.”

• Samantha, Sex and the City (season 6, episode 12)

“If you pull out a gray hair, seven will come to its funeral.”

• My wife’s version

The Discussion

This is interesting.  The old superstition is that if you pull out a gray hair seven will grow back in its place.  With the way hair follicles work, I doubt that is even possible.

But then the writers of Sex and the City tried to make a joke out of it.  They changed the number to three.

Then, in my wife copying down the quote, she melded the two sayings together.

I have written about superstitions before.  We should not let a superstition control our life unless there is a safety concern that prompts the old saying.  Pulling out or not pulling out a hair from your head is not a safety issue.

Pulling out a hair usually does not damage the follicle, but it may take some time to regrow the hair bulb and produce a new hair.  Consistent pulling of the same hair can damage the hair follicle.  You might get an ingrown hair.  Otherwise, pulling a hair of any color will only cause that hair to regrow.  In other words, no curse, but a waste of time.

Then the television show tried to make a joke out of it.  The joke is rather amusing.  It conjures an image of a funeral for a dearly departed hair.  But of course, if we go down this line of thinking, we are in danger of crossing that line that Mark Twain talked about.  “Explaining humor is a lot like dissecting a frog, you learn a lot in the process, but in the end you kill it.” – Mark Twain.

And are gray hairs that bad of a thing?

Gray hair can be seen as wise.  The Presbyterian denomination is based on representation by presbyters, the older gentlemen who gain wisdom in their years and gray hairs in the process.  “Presbyter” comes from the Greek word for “elder.”  I heard one of my teachers speak of presbyters in the old days being referred to as “the gray hairs.”

While I am not a big fan of salt and pepper gray, I find a lady who has confidence in her white hair or silver hair to be very attractive.  I suppose a lady with salt and pepper hair that “rocks it” can be as lovely as the rest.  At that point, it might be the attitude more than the hair color.

So, if you are comfortable in your own skin, and the superstition works, which it does not, then pulling out the gray hair and getting a fuller head of gray hairs might look really nice on you.

But the superstition is just a superstition, and it does not work that way.  If it did, the dozen gray hairs that I had as a teenager, that my big sister teased me by pulling them out, would have led to me being prematurely gray decades ago.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory