re. memory: try “eidetic”: “of, relating to, or marked by extraordinarily detailed and vivid recall of visual images.” 
Yep, sure do. The unlikeliness of this kind of growth is what makes it so puzzling and why I am pursuing some sort of explanation, hopefully by someone with medical credentials. Would this fall under dermatology?
I can be *so * certain of my description of what happened because:
a) I had spent about ten minutes the night before trimming my beard and moustache with the aid of a large concave (magnifying) mirror, and had examined the eyebrow in question because of a different hair that frequently grows in stiffer (but no longer) than the rest, and is, because of that, somewhat irritating. I am *absolutely positive * I would have seen the subject hair, had it been there. It was not. When I noticed it this morning it was with a normal (non-magnifying) mirror, such was its contrast with the other hairs (which are “normal”, not bushy). Switching to the concave mirror the difference was startling. When I I tweezed it out it seemed the same thickness and stiffness as all the rest.
b)This has happened before, although it was so long ago that I have forgotten whether the same eyebrow/hair position may have been involved.
Hopefully it may happen again, in which case I will take great pains to obtain photogenic, er, photographic proof.
The only proof you could offer would be a daily photo, and one in which all the hairs were somehow extended to their maximum length. Then, if a hair suddenly appeared an inch longer on the next days photo, I’d believe you.
I also believe you’re merely mistaken, and the hair was perhaps submerged in the mass.
While we’re picking nits, photogenic and otherwise, I just thought I’d mention that “whither” means “to where.” I believe the OP probably meant to use “whence” (“from where”) in the title.
Exactly - seemingly overnight but in fact it took a few weeks, as you say. You just noticed it.
You should see if you can train it to phosphoresce.
Perhaps you could dye or bleach your eyebrows; that would provide a marker for further growth.
“What happened to your eyebrows?”
“I bleached them for research.”
:eek: “Really?”
“Oh, yeah. Wanna see the charts?”
Or just shave them down totally. ::eek::
See, I get those, and I’m not even a guy, let alone an old one. Even weirder is that they always start off as dark as the rest of my eyebrow hairs and then grow in white. It makes me look like I’ve got gaps in my eyebrows. Weird frickin’ things. At least they lie flat.
You know, I really wish you learned Doubting Dopers who think you know my own body better than I do, would concentrate less on trying to convince me that what happened to me, unlikely as it seems, is somehow due to my faulty observation, and instead focus on trying to find a reasonable, physiological explanation for what happened, because IT DID HAPPEN. I am prepared to accept that there is no scientific explanation; People are not supposed to be able to lift Volkswagens off of their idiot brothers who failed to use proper support under them, but IT HAPPENS. Regardless, implying that I am somehow mistaken about the situation described in the OP is counterproductive and uncharacteristic of Dopers in general.
RedDawg don’t take it so personally, the people here have provided you with reasonable explanations of this hair phenomenon. I really doubt that you personally inspected this particular hair amidst the (thousands?) of others and pulled it straight to determine its length, and then the next morning repeated the procedure on the same hair and found that it grew an inch overnight. You asked for answers to this question and thats exactly what you got. No scientific explanation? We’re not talking about black holes lol its a hair.
Well, I’ve had something similar happen to me as well - once in a great while I will discover an arm hair that was on a turbo charged growth sput and reached an inch or two in length. They’re always stark white as well. It’s odd because I shave my arms every 4-5 days. I just figure there’s some things about my body I’ll never understand.
That would be a growth SPURT, although sput is a terribly amusing word.
Pool, in the OP I asked ONE question, to wit:** “Made me wonder what the underlying physiology of such “wild” hairs might be, or if the phenomenon has ever been studied or documented?”** (OK, granted, its actually two questions.) Kindly point me to a subsequent post that answers *those *questions. Thank you for your comment.
I don’t think anyone is claiming to know your particular body better than yourself; people are just expressing quite reasonable reservations (and offering suggested explanations) about something you’re describing that sounds impossible - not just unlikely. In order for hairs to grow, a whole bunch of different processes have to happen - hair growth is in fact quite a complex thing- for these processes all to suddenly gear up by several (perhaps tens of) orders of magnitude, for one follicle, with no other side effects is more than just an interesting puzzle, it’s a description of an event that just doesn’t seem likely to have happened that way.
That being the case, the response you’re getting is not uncharacteristic of dopers at all; it’s exactly what you should expect from a board that has a strong leaning towards natural science and skepticism.
At the border of possibility is this: maybe the follicle from which this hair is growing is actually abnormally deep within your skin; if such a hair should come to the end of its growth cycle and detach from the root, it might be possible for it to become half-pulled-out and stop in that position (prevented from being pulled out totally by the width of the base) - not new growth, just newly-exposed hair shaft, and more of it than yopu might otherwise expect.
There’s another possibility I haven’t seen mentioned, but you’re not going to like it; the hair may be a foreign, stray hair and may have been captured in a pore in your skin; the structure of hair makes it smooth in one direction and grippy in the other - and this works in a way not unlike the barbs on a harpoon - easy to go in, difficult to come out - it is not at all unheard of for stray loose hairs to happen to become lodged in skin pores and work themselves in (the result is usually quite painful and they are hard to pull out - they feel like they are rooted in place to quite a surprising depth.
No, it didn’t happen as described.
In that case, you must accept that it didn’t happen as described.
No, it doesn’t. But if it did, that would have no relevance whatsoever on possible growth rates from hair follicles.
No, it’s not, it is entirely in character. You being (genuinely, I’m sure) mistaken in your observation is the only explanation that fits the facts. I rather think that the more we doubt your story the more convinced you become that it was so. Nevertheless, I’m afraid you are mistaken.
I worked with a woman once who told me grew a long hair on her arm overnight and asked the doctor how it was possible and he said that it probably fell out of her head and just happened to get stuck in the pore and that it happens sometimes, probably in bed where hairs fall out and you just sleep on them.
I never knew what to make of that story. She said she showed him the hair and it was really embedded in there. She could pull on it and the skin would pull out just like if it was a real hair growing there. I have no idea if she was even telling me a true story.
When you pull it out, does it have a root?
Oops, sorry I repeated what you said as if it were brand new.
Not in my experience; the embedded end of the hair just has a clean, blunt end (at least the bit that comes out does).
Back when I lived with my parents, my father used to get dog hairs embedded in the soles of his feet on a regular basis; because of the barbed nature of them, the action of walking ‘ratchets’ them into the pore; pulling on them does indeed raise the skin as if they were genuinely rooted; they make a squeaky, vibrating, almost musical sound when they pull out, for more or less the same reasons that a horsehair bow makes a violin string resonate. Of course skin is somewhat less resonant, so the note is rather more muted.