I’m so jealous. I want to have a Big Hair too.
I’ve got a speaker wire growing out of the center of a mole on the back of my neck.
Wow, was that the out-loud voice?
So she had shared with your roommate so you went 'round for a look? And she shared with you? Stories like that make me realize how boring my college years were. 
Rob
My mom and I both get the nearly-invisible white hairs growing inches overnight in bizarre places. Like our necks. Or upper cheeks. Or, on at least one occasion, foreheads.
I’ve got the exact same thing, equipped with the same exquisite timing. I think it coils up in my nose as it grows, until the potential energy of the coil shape is enough for it to spring out. I usually take a small pair of scissors and shove 'em up my nose as far as I dare in order to cut this thing off as close to the base as possible. It’s thick enough at the base that you can clearly see the angle at which it was cut off by the scissors.
I’ve had it for about a decade. Sometimes I wonder how long it would have been if I’d let it live out its evil hairy existence unmolested.
I have a Mutant Hair on the left side of my jaw. I can feel it growing when I run my fingers through my beard. I usually yank it out when starts to get annoying, and it looks like a thin piece of copper wire. I compared it to a bit of fine wire once, and the colour wasn’t an exact match as the hair was more of a red-brown (which is odd, because this is my only beard hair that hasn’t turned grey), but the size, stiffness and springiness were dead on.
Hope no one minds ressurection of this zombie thread - I have an update to the “mutant hair” issue.
About three weeks ago I started to notice a lump on the left side of my neck, halfway between my centerline and ear, just a little bit above the Adam’s apple line. Based on experience, I knew that this was a mutant hair that had become trapped under the surface, and that if I didn’t get it out, it would be a problem. Well, no amount of squeezing could get this thing to come out, and sure enough, the lump on my neck grew and grew until last week it reached it’s largest, about the size of a frozen pea sitting on my neck. Mrs. nrd had become tired of watching me try to pop this thing, and couldn’t seem to get any hair to come out, so I began to wonder if perhaps this was something more like a cyst.
Mrs. nrd convinced me to make an appointment with my dermatologist to have it looked at. Of course, it took a week to get in to see him, and in that time the damn thing started to go down such that, by the time I had my appointment yesterday, it was almost gone and I felt silly being there. But, because I keep getting these in the same area, I thought that maybe he could do something to keep hair from growing there at all, preventing further outbreaks.
Well, he took one look at the spot and, after telling me that I really shouldn’t be squeezing on it (yeah right) said that it was similar to an ingrown hair and that he’d open it up and see what was inside (that’s why this doctor is cool - he doesn’t mess around with “wait and see.” I’ve been to him three times, and in those three visits, he’s taken 4 pieces of flesh - three moles and now this).
He shot me with a bit of Novocain (I guess) and made a tiny slice. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see what was going on (oh how I wished I’d had a mirror), but he showed me some of what came out - 3(!!) mutant hairs from the same spot!! I think there were more than three though because he kept saying - “oh look at those suckers,” after showing me the first three. Once he’d expressed everything (and there was no pus as far as I could tell, everything was pretty firm) he closed me up with a stitch and a bandage.
Next, I showed him an older lump on the right side of my jaw. This one was almost gone, but he injected it with something (cortisone?) to help finish it off. $20.00 co-pay and I was done.
He explained a little of what was going on. He apparently doesn’t classify the tree stump/mutant hairs as “ingrown.” I got the impression that he reserves “ingrown” for hairs that break the surface, and then go back in. My mutant hairs do not break the surface, essentially growing sideways under the skin (this is why I couldn’t pop it and why Mrs. nrd couldn’t find the hair). He explained that the body tries to wall off these hairs which causes the hard lump in the skin. Of course, squeezing, as always, makes it worse.
Today, my neck doesn’t look all that great with the stitch there, and I can still fell a bit of a lump, although that might be swelling from the incision. Anyway, it is such a great feeling to know that those hairs are no longer in there. The Dr. was hopeful that the hairs wouldn’t regrow, so I’m hoping that this will clear up the problem for good. I get these lumps on other parts of my neck, but I think this spot was the major culprit. Plus, now I know that if I get another bad one, a quick visit will clear it up.
Finally, I think part of the reason I feel so good about this is that I had one of my childhood/teenage fantasies realized. When my acne was bad in Jr. High/High School (not terrible - others had it worse - but bad enough) I would dream of going to a doctor who would use a scalpel to core out the worst of the zits, sort of how you use a knife to cut the stem out of a tomato. What I got yesterday was no where near that drastic, but it was still very satisfying to have a knife taken to a particularly pain-in-the ass skin problem.
Wow, that was long, but maybe other tree stump/mutant hair sufferers will find it useful.
Mine’s on my left shoulder. It resembles a cable. The longest I’ve let it get is about an inch and a half.
Why can’t the hair on my head grow like that?
I had a Big Hair growing on my left wrist until around Feb. 2nd when I accidentally pulled it out while taking a shower. I actually even entered it in the Guiness Book of World Records and was trying to beat the current length of over 3 inches (which was for an eye brow hair). Mine reached 2" when my washcloth caught it.
I started measuring it at 1 5/16th" on 10/12/05.
Now I have to start all over and try again next year.
I guess officially you shouldn’t have resurrected this thread, but it is awfully gratifying to have something I did be considered worth a second visit.
I just uprooted one of these Sequoia whiskers from under the right side of my jaw. Had a dozen or so in the last 10 years, but this time it was war. My Husqvarna double-edge wouldn’t touch it either.
This mother was a festering knot for 6 days. Erupted like Vesuvius 2 days ago, but not enough ‘hair’ sticking out after cleanup, to get my Channel-Locks on for excision.
I gave the knot another little squeeze tonight, and the thing stuck it’s head out. I froze my grip, and got the tweezers on it. It started to draw, then STUCK, and HURT. I was afraid it was about to pop BACK IN.
Then it broke loose. Elation.
Headed to the taxidermist with this TROPHY!!!
Ahem. Photos or it didn’t happen
My sapling is dead center of the middle of my nose. Gets a little better each time I get a little bit more of the root.
Sure thing there Mr. V; you asked for it…
Hmm - no snappics posted here?
Zombies don’t have whisker nipples.
Carry-on.
Me, too! But also once every five or six years the same thing happens on my face. Way far afield of middle-aged-lady-stache. And it always takes me by surprise. I find myself wondering if it’s possible that I have not looked at my own face in a mirror for a month. The arm ones are as infrequent, and appear on my forearms.
It’s threads like these that reassure me that I have, in fact, found my people.
Extractee, not extractOR
Man, I get a lot of these. The tree-trunk hairs. Seem to be comprised of multiple hairs intertwined, the thickness is that of a matchstick or toothpick, always black and shiny; even when shaved down, it’s a large, visible black splotch. Usually at the end of my left sideburn, occasionally on the jawline on either side. I’ll let it grow out a couple days, then grab with tweezers and yank out. A thick, long twig comes out of my face, covered in a waxy sheath, and a huge blobby follicle. If I smoosh it with the tweezers, it appears to be fibrous, thus it seems like it’s multiple hairs growing together. What’s weird is that pulling these planks from my face is pain-free, unlike pulling normal hairs.
Gossamer-like, nearly invisible hairs that grow to insane lengths. There’s one on my upper left shoulder that can get to a good six inches in length.
Wire-like black hairs that grow out perpendicular to the plane of my skin, out of a mole on my upper right arm. If my shirt sleeves ride up at work, I can expect a “what the hell is that?” from a coworker if I haven’t remembered to clip them down (and I have to use nail clippers, as a razor never seems to touch them).
And not quite the same thing as hairs, but I get these whitehead-like things on the thin-skinned parts of my face that are apparently called milia. I maybe get one every couple of months. Can’t just squeeze them out like a whitehead. To get rid of them, I have to finely score the top layer of skin with a razor or pin, let the top skin cells flake up over the next day, then pull the flakes off and pull the milia off with tweezers. I had a particularly large one over the last few months with which my usual methods didn’t work. The area suddenly began to itch pretty badly at work, I scratched, and the thing fell out into my hand, a little pearl from my face. Lovely.
Or pound it into the wall to hold your hat.