Issue date: 11/26/07 Section: Aggielife

Media Credit: Gracie Arenas [Click to enlarge]

Some people have gone to extremes to have a chance at being in the Guinness Book of World Records, but what about just taking advantage of something that you already have? That is exactly what Wesley Pemberton did - with his 5-inch leg hair.

Pemberton, Class of 2004, majored in biomedical science and is in his final year of medical school in Dallas. He came across his lengthy leg hair in June.

"I was sitting in the car with my mother-in-law and my wife, and I opened the door and this breeze just came through and this thing was just like waving in the air," Pemberton said. "At first I thought the hair belonged to one of the girls, and I reached in to take it off and it was attached!"

Pemberton said he went home and joked about his hair, saying it was the longest in the world. After saying this, Pemberton measured his hair, which was between 3 1/2 and four inches long.

After measuring his hair, Pemberton looked up the longest hair on record and saw that the title had been held since 2005 by a man in Australia with 4.88 inch long hair.

"From there I just kinda forgot about it," Pemberton said.

In September, as Pemberton was getting out of the shower, he wondered if the hair had grown, so he measured it. It had grown 1 inch and was at 4 1/2 inches.

"At this point I was thinking…well, maybe it will get long enough to get into the world record," he said. "So from here, I really got serious. I took care of it and I washed it and conditioned it daily."

Pemberton said he stopped wearing shorts for a while and occasionally when his wife would sit on his lap, he would yell at her to watch out for his leg.

"I thought it'd be a really neat topic of conversation, at least," he said. "My friends and wife would make fun of it and want to yank it out, but I protected it, of course."

Pemberton investigated what it took to be able to get into the Guinness Book of World Records and found that there were two ways of entering. One was free and the other was pricey, with costs totaling $300. Pemberton decided to go the free way.

Continued...

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