When Blue Makes White

“Have you ever heard the term Blue Hairs?”

Michael Woudenberg

, my co-author from another mother who writes

Polymathic Being

asked me. It’s another one of those typically random observations where lots of things come together to create an interesting problem, and that’s why we’re talking about it.

Growing up in South Carolina, I had heard the term occasionally from my dad, when he kindly but humorously referred to a group of older women. I told Michael the phrase was familiar to me.

“Do you know why they were called that?”

I didn’t. Instantly, I was curious. Michael explained:

Well, when I first moved to Tucson Arizona. I heard the term and it made no sense to me. Someone told me it was because their hair was so thin you could see the blue of the sky.

I kind of forgot about it until over a decade later when I was reading Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder and they mentioned using bluing compound to clean and I had no idea what that was.

So I Googled it and found that’s how you make whites whiter. So for the blue hairs it d…