My Dad started getting gray hair in high school. Getting my hair cut today, my stylist found a single gray hair (which I immediately pulled out).
I’m not necessarily vain, but I’d rather not go gray at the age of 20. Is there any chance that this single hair was a fluke, or am I going to start seeing more of them?
I’d hazard a guess that you’re gonna get more of them, but not all at once, you 've still got some years ahead. I saw my first grays in high school and gradually have noticed more and more of them. I turn 30 in a few weeks, and my temples are getting noticeably gray now (they stand out GREAT against my dark brown hair). The ratio of gray to brown hair is still heavily in favor of the brown hairs though, and the grays aren’t really that noticeable except when I have the hair cut short (the light seems to catch it better that way).
So it’s taken 15 years or so from my first gray hairs to multiply to the point where other people notice I have gray hair, and then most people only notice it if they’re looking for them or my hair’s short and the light catches it right. Now this is just my head, mind you, YMMV.
BTW, chicks seem to dig to salt & pepper temples. 
No problem with grey hair here. It makes you look “distinguished”. You can either relax and enjoy it or start coloring your hair now. OR a fresh bottle of Grecian Formula never hurt!
How’s your life been lately? The reason I ask is because during the most stressful months of my high school years, I sprouted three gray hairs at the top of my head. I plucked those bastards out, and I haven’t had a white hair since.
:knocks wood:
My first gray hair appeared when I was eighteen. I thought it was pretty cool, actually.
I’m still under thirty, and I now have a patch of them. It really doesn’t bother me. I actually think they’re pretty cool. I don’t think they ever will. What I’m hoping for is to have what my grandmother got: a perfectly lightning-bolt shaped patch on the top of her head. I plan to tell everyone I was hit by lightning. I’ve got a whole story planned around it.
Signs of natural aging have bothered me. Some of the coolest people I have ever known have been old people. I just hope I can be the same.
Gray hair bothers my mother, who warned me against what ** AudreyK ** did. “Never pull them,” she warned me grimly. “They’ll regroup and come back with three of their friends.”
Johnny, my friend got his first grays at age 22 and was very upset about it. He is 25 now and he’s got more along the temples, the top and front of his hair. As soon as he realized he had the grays though, he looked for pictures of his father at that age to figure out when they would be more prominent, and decided shortly after looking that it didn’t matter. Every six weeks we color his hair with Loreal for men.
I have a small patch of white hairs at the back of my head that has been there all my life (or at least since the rest of my hair changed from very light blond to dark mousy brown as I grew up) - it is possible that the single hair mentioned by the OP has always been there.
I noticed my first grey hair when I was 17. I see I’m not alone in this. By the time I was 25, people started noticing the grey, so I usually dye it.
At 27, I started finding grey hairs in places other than my head. That was weird.
Johnny, the first one is only ever the start of it. 
I’d consider dying, but I’m scared I’d end up like Ronnie Reagan; 70 with jet back hair, looking ridiculous and no option but to keep dying or go grey overnight.
Erm, make that dyeing, unless you want to put a whole new interpretation on the seriousness of grey hair.
“Hey, pretty mama… I hear you dig guys with gray hair. HAH! HUH!”
“I’ll show you my roots if you show me yours.”
I’m not all that worried about my hair going gray, but I wanted to know what was coming. It’s nice to hear that these kinds of things generally go slowly. I do like my hair just the way it is.
As for the question about stress, yes; the last month-and-a-half of my fall semester were incredibly stressful for me, but I thought the connection between stress/being scared and white hair was a wive’s tale. 
Whew. I thought it was just me…
You’re not in trouble until you find them on your pillow, in the drain, on the brush…
Sounds like we’re in the same boat – I had only two or three gray hairs in my late teens, and now (I’m in my mid20s) in the last year I’ve noticed at least a dozen prominent ones in my forelocks. (Going for the Scott Bakula thing, I guess.) Little by little, I’m finding one or two stray grays along my temples as well. Figure I can milk it for “intense intellectual” come 30.
I’m not saying that stress causes hair to turn white as getting a good scare does, because in that case the hair turns white quickly, if not instantly. My point was that in my experience, months of stress apparently caused me to grow white hair. Perhaps the same happened to you. If that’s the case, you probably won’t sprout anymore once the causes of your stress have resolved.
A related column from Cecil: Can hair turn white overnight from fright?
Count your blessings.
Better turncoats than deserters my friend…
-FK
I was another one of the people who got gray hair in high school. As far as I know, it’s genetic. My mother had the very same thing happen to her. If you got your Dad’s hair genes, you may very well be condemned to the same fate.
Young people with gray hair are the silent minority. Too long have we suffered under the heavy-handed rule of the pigmented. It’s time we joined together to work for a better future for our kind. No gray-topped teen should ever be judged over a simple matter of melanin. It’s time that society rewrote the rule that says only those blessed with colorful hair are “normal.” Never again should one of our own have to dye their God-given hair color in a desperate effort to fit in. We, the long-suffering, gray-headed oppressed, must unite for our cause.
We Demand the End of Intolerance
We Demand Equal Rights
We Demand More Hair-Care Products Tailored Specifically For Gray Hair
and most importantly…
We Demand Our Own Cable Network.
Viva La Revolution!
-FabioClone
Wow…I guess I’m premature, but I’ve noticed grey hairs starting since I was in 7th grade. Of course I was 32 at the time…
Just kiddin’. I really did see a few greys at around 7th grade, but they were always random. I’ll still find a few every now and then, but nothing really to worry about.
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It seems like gray is a more popular spelling than grey.
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Johnny Bravo, my mom always said that if you pull out one gray hair, four more will grow back. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but she was right about always wearing clean underwear in case you have an accident.
Um, never mind about that.