MichMoms Blog

Category: Health

Today's four-letter word is brought to you by a student at my kid's school

I've got a riddle for you: What's white, travels in really, really small clusters and sticks to everything in sight before giving up the ghost?

No, it's not teeny, tiny white Styrofoam packaging beads (but that really is an excellent guess). Those suckers live on static electricity, don't they? Like Visa, they tend to be everywhere you want to be. But that is not the correct answer.

The correct answer, boys and girls, is lice.

Yes, lice.

That's like a rotten piece of meat teeming with maggots dropped in the middle of Thanksgiving Day dinner, right there next to the sweet potatoes and ambrosia.

Last week, my 9-year-old climbed into the Mystery Mobile after school and excitedly announced that both her teacher and the school secretary scoured her head earlier that day checking for head lice. "Look! Here's a note from the principal!" she said as she handed it over.

That seriously made my mind go blank for a minute. No thoughts, no mental processing, no breath or heartbeat if not for the autonomic nervous system. And then all systems were go. "WHAT?! LICE?! WHAT?!"

She actually thought that was funny. Normally I would have been proud of the fact that I made my kid laugh spontaneously, but I wasn't shooting for laughter.

Turns out the Lice Invasion of 2009 is, somehow, confined to our school's third and fourth grades. Before you ask, I don't know why. I do not know why the kids in second and fifth, who have classrooms right next to the third and fourth graders, get a pass. What about all of the other students, up to eighth grade? Don't know.

I do know I have three kids who go to that school who share hats, headbands and pillows. God, I hope we do not get lice. Lord I will truly stop using You as a foil to garner chuckles in my blog posts if You spare us from getting lice. I'm serious. It's gonna be hard to stop using You in that way, but I am willing to make the sacrifice. Amen.

Gah! Just saying the word lice makes me itch - everywhere, not just on my head. So for the next, I don't know, rest of eternity I have to dig through my kid's head to catch any rogue varmints thinking about moving into Bristow Manor.

Of course they all took a shower that night, one by one, as I scratched and batted at invisible creepy crawlies on my skin. Then I almost fainted dead away, when my 9-year-old explained step-by-step how she took care of her noggin.

She told me how she washed her hair twice with shampoo and rinsed very well. Cobra Kai, grasshopper. She applied conditioner twice, rinsed very well and then dried her hair with a towel. Still walkin' on sunshine. Then she used MY pick and MY fine-tooth comb to brush her potentially lice-infested hair!!

I am not exaggerating when I say it took everything I had to keep my mouth from dropping open and screaming. My eyes did widen as I said, "Um, that's good. Good. Bend over, let me check your head."

So I don't know where this actually leaves us. I did find a post that gave detailed directions on how to prevent and remove lice. Thank you Moxie.

I was not aware "lice can more easily crawl to another head if the hair is loose. Girls with long hair should keep it up in a bun." (Pauses as she uses 63 bobby pins to tame her ponytail into the size of a small dinner roll.)

My imagination, as you may have guessed, is an Olympic gold medalist in track and field. I don't want to have to wash every piece of cloth in this house in hot water. I do not want to walk around wearing a fanny pack filled with bottles of rubbing alcohol and Clorox wipes. It's going to be a long year, folks.

On the upside, I will admit the second thought I had, after I yelled, "WHAT?! LICE?! WHAT?!" was "I know exactly what I'm blogging about tomorrow."

More lemonade anyone?