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It’s Lice

“It could be eczema,” I said.

“It’s lice,” my friend repeated.

“Psoriasis?”

“Lice.”

“Dry skin from the weather changing?”

“Lice.”

“Do you see any lice in my hair?” I asked.

“No.”

“So, then it could be anything.”

“It’s lice,” she repeated again.

“Allergies? Brain tumor? Some rare autoimmune disease?”

“Oh, my gracious!” my friend exclaimed. “Why are you wishing those things on yourself? I’m telling you it’s lice!”

“When I was a kid, I had to carry a special soap with me everywhere because I was allergic to most soaps,” I told her. “True story.”

She glared at me. I scratched my head. I’d been scratching at it all day.

My kindergartener had been scratching at his head, too. Maybe it was lice. I scanned our heads. I didn’t see anything.

A Google search informed me that adult lice are fast. A Google search informed me that the eggs, or nits, are nearly impossible to see. This seems like a losing battle. No matter; I didn’t have lice.

(Scratch, scratch.)

I Googled again. It told me to ask the school nurse to check my son’s head. If he had it, I surely had it. On Monday, my son asked his teacher to go to the school nurse for an itchy head. He was not granted permission. On Tuesday, he asked again. Again refused.

In the teacher’s defense, this year my son started a Spanish immersion class. His whole day has to be spoken in español. We don’t speak Spanish at home. He is learning fast, but it’s only October. It’s possible that instead of asking to see the school nurse, he was asking to see the school elephants. If so, the “no” was certainly justified. Also, do schools actually have elephants? Because that would be amazing.

On Tuesday night, while we scratched and scratched, I told my son to use the word “lice.” Not that it was lice; it was definitely allergies. But just to be sure. Apparently, the English word “lice” is recognizable in any language. He was immediately sent to the school nurse. She inspected his head and found a nit. I was called to pick him up.

“What do I do?” I asked my friend. “I have kids. Their heads have touched every surface of my home. We’ve been itching for days. Do we just burn the house down? Is it still considered arson and a crime if lice are involved?”

She walked me through the washing of the linens. The vacuuming of the couches. The spraying of the carpets. “They can only live for 48 hours off your head,” she said, “so the other option is just to set out two lawn chairs in the middle of a room and not let your kids move or touch anything. They can sleep there, too.”

Yeah, right.

I picked up my son. His school nurse gave me a tutorial on how to comb his hair for nits and handed me a comb. “He’s got thick hair,” she said. “This will be hard, but you can do it.”

“I’ve been itching, too,” I said. “Can I comb the lice and nits out of my own hair?”

The nurse just laughed. “Good luck,” she said.

I had to leave my son at home while I went to give a talk at the local university. I put him on the couch, which we had decided would be the last festering pool of our head creature infestation. My son watched cartoons for hours on the couch and scratched. My husband watched him and did a thousand loads of laundry, vacuumed and sprayed. At the lecture, I was mindful of every time I raised my hand near my head. If my son had lice, I probably had lice.

After the lecture, the students wanted to meet me, talk to me, hug me. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to tell 150 people that I most likely had lice. As each person leaned in for a hug, I reached out a hand to shake. Everyone saw; there were whispers. I’m usually an amazing hugger, I wanted to tell them.

That evening, every member of the family was lathered and combed and picked and combed again. It was a massacre. We got professionally checked the next day and were told we were clear.

I’m considering shaving everyone in my family’s head. Feels right.

——

Katie Langrock is a nationally

syndicated columnist.

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