The color of sage

I'm seeing more and more television ads for hair coloring products for middle aged men whose salt and pepper hair is heavy on the salt.

These ads, interestingly enough, don't seek to completely eliminate gray from the salt and pepper palette. The new products such as Just for Men's Touch of Gray allow you to keep in as little or as much gray as you want for both the hair on your head and the hair on your face.

I guess we've come a long way baby from the hair color products that did as well shining shoes as they did hiding or masking gray hair.

In addition to the over-the-counter products more and more hair salons are being asked by men to reduce the salt and increase the pepper. Redken, the hair products people, have something called Color Camo, and a recent New York Times article noted that the number of Color Camo treatments was almost one million last year, up from about 860,000 the previous year.

The attitude out there is that too much gray is the look of death to men who want to retain the look of vitality, which means they still want to look like they've got some usefulness left in them for this society of ours that reveres youth.

That snow on your head is about as appealing as snow in April -- it was kind of cool early on in December, but was real pain as the months wore on.

As a film editor in Burbank, Calif., told the Times: "In my business, if you're over 40 you're too old. I passed that age a while ago, so it can be hard to get a job with younger producers."

Embrace the gray, I say.

You can have the vitality and still have the gray, after all. Age is as much about attitude as it is about its physical characteristics. If you feel gray, you're going to look and act gray. You can only go so far in remaking yourself into someone you're not.

In a way, I feel like I've earned my gray and I'm not ashamed to show it off, just as an officer likes to show his colonel's oak leaves or his general's stars. I feel my gray gives me rank when it comes to experience and wisdom. My gray shows I've been there and I've done that and I'm prepared to help others go there and do that.

There isn't much that surprises me anymore in the work place. There isn't much I haven't seen already, have had to deal with already -- all the good, the bad and the ugly of more than 30 years of work. As they say, I've got the gray hair to prove it. I've been Dad to babies, teens, high school students, college students and young adults about to make their way into the world of work. I don't think there's much they can throw at me at this point that I haven't seen already. I'm a cagey batter who's seen about every pitch that can be thrown.

My shingle as sage is out there, right on top of my head. And in order to be a sage you have to have the age and the gray hair to prove it.