Now I’m a pretty hirsute guy but I produce dark, almost black, hair. Of course I don’t have body hair (apart from the tiny fluffy hairs) all over. For instance, I’ve no hairs growing out of my rib area.
However there is this one rogue hair. I first noticed it about 3 or 4 years ago. I’m 35 now. It was extremely slender and pure white. Growing about half way up my right side in my rib area this thing I say without hyperbole must’ve been about 6 inches long. I was incredulous. It was so difficult to see I almost lost sight of it completely before managing to tug it out. I stared at the thing for quite a long time. Pure white and thin. Like a thread of spider silk. A year or so later there it was again. Maybe 3 inches this time - still pretty long I think you’ll agree.
This morning in the shower I spotted it again, only 2 inches this time and I tugged it out.
What is this thing? Is it a result of some genetic mutation? Is this a genetic ghost from previous distant ancestor? Can anyone shed some light on it?
Sorry, I didn’t think to take a picture, nor do I think you’d want to see one…
In my youth, I had bushy dense eyebrows. Other than a long one once a year or so, I never had any problems really.
Now though, for the last 10 years I suppose, I must trim my eyebrows. I leave some there to be sure. I am not about to start shaving my brows off. The problem that I have is many hairs will start growing that feel like trees compared to the normal hair. Hard, unbending, will grow to an inch long seemingly overnight. The root base will get sore and swollen. Until I use the beard trimmer and mow it all down.
My WAG is genetic mutations. I don’t have any direct cite that it’s true for the “rogue hairs”, but I do know that random somatic mutations are a cause of moles, nevi, and many lumps and blemishes on the skin. Basically a mole originates with a mutated skin cell that grows faster than normal, forming a little “colony” of mutant skin cells. They’re entirely benign… most of the time at least.
And I think we all know that rogue hairs are often found on moles. In that case my WAG is that the skin cells in the mole are sending some sort of signal that stimulates the hair follicle, since follicles and melanocytes come from separate cell types. In other cases though I’d guess that there were mutations in the hair follicle itself, particularly when the rogue hair is isolated.
When I was in college, I had one hair on my right forearm that would grow to 4-5 inches long. It amused me, so I never plucked it.
Nowadays, I have a single hair on my forehead that will sometimes grow to 3.5 inches. I find it amusing, so I leave it until it falls off. I call it my “bang” – I have a high forehead / receding hairline, so I can’t really have “bangs”, I just have one bang instead. Ha!
I get these now and then, in a handful of places. They’re just normal hairs like any other, except that they’re growing in a place that is otherwise basically hairless. I pluck 'em when I notice 'em.
(Then there’s that one hair in my eyebrow that is convinced it is a pube–always comes in kinky. It gets plucked too. :p)
Now I’m a pretty hirsute guy but I produce dark, almost black, hair. Of course I don’t have body hair (apart from the tiny fluffy hairs) all over. For instance, I’ve no hairs growing out of my rib area.
However there is this one rogue hair. I first noticed it about 3 or 4 years ago. I’m 35 now. It was extremely slender and pure white. Growing about half way up my right side in my rib area this thing I say without hyperbole must’ve been about 6 inches long. I was incredulous. It was so difficult to see I almost lost sight of it completely before managing to tug it out. I stared at the thing for quite a long time. Pure white and thin. Like a thread of spider silk. A year or so later there it was again. Maybe 3 inches this time - still pretty long I think you’ll agree.
For over 5 years now I’ve been finding these rogue hairs randomly about my person. First was on one side of my nose - it grows to about 3 inches before I notice it and remove it. Second comes out of my shoulder, has has been known to get to about 6 inches long before I find it and remove. Then there’s the one that grows over one of my eyebrows that doesn’t get longer than a cple inches before I notice. They all grow back pretty quickly but unlike some of the replies, they are not “normal hairs, except longer”, if I read the OP correctly, he is talking about extremely fine, almost translucent hairs that appear from nowhere. That is what I have. I’ve always wondered what was going on, but I’m just glad I’m not the only one
I have a patch of hair growing out of a scar on my temple. (I remember that day, when I was year 4 or something, another boy threw a lump of coal at me. My mother was teacher that day and sorted it out. Didn’t do anything about the other boy.)
There’s usually fine hairs growing on anyones cheeks, sometimes they change type…
