Four Letter Word

It was a relatively quiet day in my household with the TV on and piano practice quietly making a racket in the after school hours. One of the girls was at the table doing her homework and vigorously scratching her head. With her pencil down and two hands running through her hair she turned to my wife to complain about all the itching. In only a few short seconds my wife was uttering the four letter word all parents dread: Lice.

We are not talking about a few pioneers here either. These little empire builders were so plentiful they had cities and suburbs, apartments and urban sprawl. We can’t be certain but we think we may have interrupted them during the primaries for the lice elections. They were well established and thriving.

I share this with you reluctantly. Nobody wants to admit that they have lice in their home right? I mean, we’re clean people. We take showers once a week. Well, we at least play in the sprinklers outside once in a while and the kids do get all soapy when they wash my car. How could we get lice? How could this great misfortune fall upon the head of one of our household? Oh the horror.

And guess what? Our family had just spent the weekend at my brother’s house. No, she didn’t get it there; the bug city was too far established to only be a few days old. We were forced to call their house to let them know we may have infested them with the terrible biohazard. That’s a fun call to make.

So first you the buy the little comb and the napalm for hair. You wash the heck out of that little kid’s hair until you decide it just may be easier to shave it all off and start over. Hey, it may grow back in a whole new color. Unfortunately the little one is not ready to go for the Mr. Clean look and she vetoes that plan.

Of course, the bottle says that you can’t re-apply this radioactive biohazard to the little licetopia for at least another week. So you start looking for back woods herbal remedies that promise to not give your child the ability to glow in the dark and read minds.

Friends and relatives share their lice fixes. From tomato juice to tea tree oil you try them all. At least the little buggers might drown in all this stuff. Soon your child’s head smells like a freshly tossed green salad and you are seeing fewer and fewer lice in your four-times-a-day inspections.

While hers are treatable, the rest of the family has another problem. As soon as you see bug number one you develop a deadly case of the heebie-jeebies. Don’t give me that look, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you see a spider on your friend’s shoulder you instantly start to feel like there is a spider on you too.

Only, it’s worse with lice. When you see a small industrial complex of tiny bugs building condos in your child’s hair the schizophrenia starts to set in. Your head starts to itch and you imagine a superhighway of little lice commuters traipsing along your cranium on their way home from a long hard day of chewing through your skull to your brain.

Everybody in our house caught this imaginary infestation. Of course, my glass-is-half-empty wife had it the worst. Every day for two weeks I would come home from work and be forced to inspect her hair for those tricky little critters. I felt like I was living the nature channel. Just like the monkeys, I was looking for bugs on my mate. Sexy. And when I couldn’t find lice in her hair she actually seemed disappointed.

Her disappointment was baffling until I realized her dilemma. Every time I didn’t find anything it just reinforced what I have been saying for over fifteen years now; she’s crazy. So, if I was able to find bugs in her hair, yeah she’d have lice, but at least she wouldn’t be crazy. You can treat lice quickly. Crazy is a lot harder to fix.

She never did get those lice and I am now glad to announce that our home is once again lice free. Heads only itch when we don’t know the answer to something or we get syrup in our hair. Just like normal. My wife is back to her self again; beautiful, wise, lice free, and still crazy. Just like normal.