Lice Heads to School

Head Lice? Not My Kids!

WARNING: Reading this article may cause you to scratch your head. It is not a sign of lice. Repeat: It is not a sign of lice.

Two decades ago the little girls who lived down the street came over frequently to play with my youngest daughter. I noticed them scratching the backs of their heads but thought nothing of it until my daughter started doing the same thing. One by one my other children began scratching the backs of their heads, and eventually so did I.

The little girls' mother's vigorous head scratching indicated that she had the same problem. She and I concluded that we all had some kind of disease. We didn't have a name for it and none of us felt sick, though, so we dealt with the itching.

Then I met with my family. After hugs and welcomes, after we had spent several hours together, I mentioned to my dad, a former barber, that my kids and I might have one of the diseases mentioned in some of his old barber books. In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have mentioned the word, "disease" at the dinner table. My mother leapt to her little feet and ran over to examine our heads.

And that was when the craziness set in. Everybody jumped. Hands flew into hair. What followed was complete chaos. My sister, a future nurse, propelled herself to action. The plan included phone calls to pharmacies, a trip to the drugstore, and a basement sink loaded with lots of lice removal products. One by one, we went downstairs and washed our hair with the products. One by one the towels went into the washing machine. Mom scurried to wash the chairs and the couches, the floors and the walls.

The process however was far from over. While my son's hair took only a matter of minutes, picking nits from the hair of my daughters and myself was a process that would take more hours than we had in a day. Our hair was very long and very thick. I did the best I could, put the treatment on one more time, picked more nits, washed all the bedding, cleaned all the furniture, scrubbed the floors, vacuumed the rugs, and fell into bed exhausted.