You know how modern science can now determine how much Neanderthal DNA we have in us? Well, I’ve got a new revelation for them: Apparently I have dinosaur and unicorn DNA.
I determined this through rigorous scientific investigation, of course: I studied my own hair follicles.
As you may have heard, some dinosaurs probably had feathers. A feather’s structure consists of a stalk with downy stuff attached to it. Well, guess what? I’m growing those. Out of my chin.
I realize this is probably far more information that you wanted to know; but it’s true: I have two follicles that each grow a short, stiff, pure-white feather. Even though I’ve yanked them out the instant they appear, over and over for the past few decades, they still haven’t given up. That dinosaur DNA is tough stuff.
On the unicorn side, one has only to look at my forehead to spot the evidence. As people age, it seems as though their eyebrows either slowly disappear or else attempt a hostile takeover. Mine are the latter type — if I didn’t break out the hedge trimmers regularly, I’d have dense shrubbery protruding several inches from my face.
But my unicorn horn isn’t an errant eyebrow hair. It’s special. It doesn’t generate the same tough wiry strands that threaten my scissor blades; nor does it try to take over my entire brow. Instead, it emits a single fine, silky-soft golden (or maybe that should be ‘gol-dern’) hair that grows and grows and grows from the centre of my forehead. It’s virtually invisible against my skin until it reaches such a ridiculous length that I can spot it curling softly out into space when I catch the correct angle in the mirror. And my unicorn-horn won’t quit, either, no matter how often I pluck it out.
So there you have it: Dinosaurs and unicorns do exist in the modern world; they’re just cleverly disguised as middle-aged women.
And if that’s not enough news for you, here’s some more: Book 16, Spy In The Sky is now available for pre-order at all retailers, hooray!
The release date is May 7, 2021 — if you want to get an email when it goes live, please click here to sign up for my New Book Notification list.
Anybody else have dinosaur or unicorn DNA?
Author Diane Henders 
Haha! The bane of every middle-aged woman and man – crazy single-strand hairdos. I wonder if middle-aged people of the Middle Ages had the same problem. If so, they probably didn’t care. Or didn’t know. Were there mirrors back then? See what I did there… the same as what happens to you when you do research online. Digging ourselves deeper and deeper in a rathole. Or whatever it’s called. Congratulations on the release of “Spy in the Sky”! Exciting news!!
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Thank you! I’m happy to be launching it — I had high hopes for an earlier release date; but I’ve discovered that for me, writing a book takes as long as it takes. I could write and release faster, but I wouldn’t be happy with the result.
Your comment about the Middle Ages made me chuckle, too. Here’s a sobering thought: At my current age, I’d be ancient if I was living the Middle Ages. Considering the average life expectancy back then was 33… yeah, let’s not go there. 😉
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I got my laugh fix today from your post!! So funny…..we all have some weird growth things stemming from hair as we age. I’m not sure what animals DNA cause my “hair” issues, but as my eyebrows turn white (they didn’t like the gray hair transformation and decided awhile ago to skip that step), they grow long and wild. No problem if one pays attention to detail, but not wearing reading glasses while looking in a mirror or shaving, I’m not seeing the wild antics they are trying to pull. And if your partner doesn’t wear their close up vision glasses, you don’t have a safety check. The good news….my daughters are quite quick to notify me of an eyebrow hair follicle that has grown longer and faster than anything else on my face. That pesky DNA!!
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LOL! That’s what I need: Some younger eyes to give me a heads-up. It’s easy to get complacent when all I can see in the mirror is a soft-focus version of myself. No wrinkles, no errant hairs… either I need to wear reading glasses more often, or the rest of the world needs to get blurry-glasses. 😉
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The vote the rest of the world thing!!
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I may have some of that magical, ancient DNA too, Diane. I think I mentioned to you many Moons ago that I have invisible, thick, hair-like growths that spring suddenly out of my lip(!) and (gah!) ears that I appear to have an allergy to. Well, now, I get mile-long eyebrow hairs that are at least ten times thicker than all the rest, and certainly not invisible when they appear. Tweezers require a good tug to remove them, and there’s an audible click when they finally come free… sigh. Your Unicorn horn and feathers sound like a blessing. 🦄 🙂
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Hmm, it sounds as though your unicorn DNA is very powerful, but a bit confused as to where it manifests. Who knows, maybe all those random eruptions are just leading up to a beautiful golden unicorn horn. But I’m not sure that’s a good thing… 😉
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They do appear to be moving in the right direction, now you mention it! 😳
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Oh the joys of aging! I hear you on the unwanted and unusual tufts sprouting hither and thither on my face. Perhaps I’m turning into a Billy goat.
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LOL! Well, considering how much you like rock-climbing, maybe that’s an asset. 😉
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Dave Barry says when men my age pull on a nose hair, you can watch their hairline recede. My hairdresser trims my ears. I think I’ll let my nose hair grow and wax it into a moustache
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Ha! As horrifying as that sounds, it’s still better than growing out your ear hair and using it as a combover. 😉
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I don’t need that…yet.
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and there you go, now we know exactly what makes you special. But one question: Is a unicorn a kind of dinosaur or is you DNA just really confused?
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I think we can be pretty certain that my DNA is really confused. But the unicorn/dinosaur question is a valid one. Maybe that’s why nobody’s ever seen a unicorn in recent times. Hmmm… more research is required. 😉
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While your post could be considered TMI it actually made me feel less like an anomaly as I too suffer from dinosaur DNA or whatever causes the rapid and random hair growth on and under my chin. It seems impossible to keep the ones I can see, and the ones I can feel but not see, plucked. I have tried stronger glasses but they are somehow camouflaged when I get out the tweezers. I keep several tweezers around the house at strategic locations that at specific times of day have just the right amount of daylight to highlight the nasty little buggers and assist with their removal. I agree with Michelle about the upside of wearing masks. If fact I might adopt a germaphobe stance and continuing wearing masks after they are no longer mandatory. I’d rather people think I am odd than hairy!
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I’ve been appreciating the masks for that reason, too! It’s going to be hard to adjust when our world finally gets back to ‘normal’. For me, the toughest thing will be to remember to dress in clothes that don’t look as though some down-on-her-luck hobo discarded them. We live out in the middle of nowhere and I’m usually working outside for at least part of the day, so I’ve gotten into the habit of wearing my grubbies all the time to save my ‘good clothes’ (read ‘clothes without visible rips or stains’).
Or maybe I’ll just embrace my inner (and outer) slob and rock my grubbies with pride. I’ll call myself ‘eccentric’. Yeah, that’s got a nice ring to it… 😉
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Huge congratulations on the book front.
My father’s eyebrows were special. If bored at dinner parties he used to plait them as a signal to my mama that he wanted to leave (or wanted the guests to leave). Fortunately my eyebrows did not come from him.
The dinosaur thing on my chin? Oh yes. And it outlives and outgrows dinosaurs too.
Years back I had chemotherapy – not for cancer but to keep the MS under control (which failed). At the time I only lost the grey hairs on my head (though they have returned with friends). My arms and legs lost all their hair which never regrew.
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I didn’t realize they did chemo for MS. How awful — the damn disease is bad enough. But it’s odd that the chemo only eliminated your grey hairs and arm-and-leg hair. I guess knocking out bristly chin hairs would be far too much to ask for.
I laughed at your account of your father’s eyebrows, and his innovative use of them! I’m pretty sure that if I was a guest where the host started plaiting his eyebrows, I’d move on in fairly short order. But then again, maybe not… I might just stick around for the entertainment. 😉
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Better than braiding your armpits
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Now that would be a party-stopper.
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I miss the days when my “feathers” were only two on the underside of my chin where I could get to them before anyone else noticed. Nowadays, I leave the house all smooth and pretty only to have eyebrow length, almost black feathers sprouting everywhere on my very fair skinned chin by lunchtime. I can only surmise that, having tamed my mono brow through relentless plucking over the years, it decided it needed revenge. I now keep a pair of tweezers in the emergency kit in my car. One thing good about the mask requirement is that getting caught with my chin “downed” hasn’t happened for a whole year. Silver lining.
And my unicorn dna has manifested in a much more noticeable way: I have a cyst in the middle of my forehead (a benign, cosmetic annoyance too expensive to have removed). It’s easily camouflaged with bangs but still- I’d really like a different hair style. Hahaha! Talk about TMI!!! Holy cow. And boy do I sound attractive,lmao! (Btw, I am actually quite happy with how I look, so this is just me rereading my post and having a laugh over how I’ve just described myself).
Being female and middle aged is an adventure.
Pre-ordered my copy of book 16!!! YAH!
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That’s awesome — thanks! I hope you enjoy Book 16. 🙂
You know, I think you’ve hit on the reason why we get big greebly chinwhiskers as we get older. It’s definitely ‘revenge of the eyebrows’. When our eyebrows realize we’ll never allow them to turn into Brezhnev-Brows, they just hit the road and move down to our chins. If we lived long enough, they’d probably get sick of being constantly plucked from there and move on, too; but I’d hate to have to pluck them out of my chest. Yet another reason why I’ve never wanted to be immortal… 😉
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BWAHAHAHA!!! Wait, why am I laughing? That possible scenario should be horrifying not hilarious. But I love it and I’m still laughing. Thanks for that!
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My pleasure! (With a bit of horror mixed in.) 😉
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I think my issues (hair issues, anyway) come from the Old Man Gene, not anything particularly Neanderthal in nature. Aside from what now sprouts more readily out of my ear canals and nostrils (which are trimmed with a ferocious-looking but painless trimmer), I get more of those errant eyebrow hairs that seemingly grow over an inch within a few days’ time, and are curly. Worse are those that will occasionally grow below the eyebrow or above the cheekbone, which will sometimes flutter in my field of vision if I don’t catch them in time. They’re never dark either. Maybe I’m 0.00000001% Swedish or something. 😁
It also leads to the interesting theory that perhaps male pattern baldness is caused by gravity–the hair gets lazy, and will sprout everywhere else except on top of our heads. (Although I’m lucky in that I got the good hair gene from my mother’s side and still have a full head of hair. Salt ‘n’ pepper, though. I’ll live with it.)
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“Male pattern baldness is caused by gravity” — I like that! Gravity is unkind to the rest of our bodies, too, so why not the hair? You’re lucky your follicles haven’t succumbed to gravity yet. Interestingly, I read somewhere that male pattern baldness is actually determined by maternal genes, so that’s just one more thing men can thank/blame their mothers for.
Hmm, so you’re either 0.000000001% Swedish, or possibly Mutant Unicorn. You grow the golden horn; just not in the accustomed location. Maybe you have superpowers, too! 😉
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Uh, yeah. I’ll have to go with TMI. Which means that I can’t mention the little brush that grows from my chin periodically. Several individual whiskers share the same flower pot, as it were. But I won’t mention that. 😁
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LOL! So you have dinosaur DNA, too. Good to know I’m not the only one! 🙂
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So, yeah, I have dinosaur DNA spread all over the lower half of my face. Cute on a teenager, not cute on a 58 YO woman. I’ve been fighting those dang “feathers” for probably 20 years now. Finally had them lasered off. But guess what; the laser doesn’t work on those pretty white ones. Sorry to hear about your monobrow, but love the one long beauty growing from your forehead. I have a similar one on my lower jaw. I swear, one minute there’s nothing, the next it just appears – an inch long. And it’s not one of the pretty white ones either. It must have hidden for every laser treatment, and feels free to expose itself whenever I’m not paying attention! Still, people should fear us for the mutants we are.
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Right on! Anybody who’s ever pissed off a middle-aged woman would agree, I’m sure.
I haven’t tried laser hair removal because I have serious trust issues around letting other people get near me with implements (read “weapons”) that can burn me if wielded carelessly. (Or when wielded with malicious intent; although I make it a point not to antagonize anyone who has access to said implements.) It’s good to know that the dinosaur feathers are impervious to lasers anyway. At least tweezers are cheap. 😉
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