The Lice Squad

As soon as I walked into my son’s preschool classroom a few Fridays ago, I knew something was wrong.

Both teachers had the kind of apprehensive look on their faces that generally precedes an overly detailed explanation of how Bruiser skinned his knee on the playground and would-I-please-sign-this-accident-report, or how he made the unfortunate choice of using his hands instead of his words after a kid spit on him. I sighed and braced myself for pint-sized drama.

“We had an incident this morning,” the teacher whispered to me as she approached.

“Did he start it or was he defending himself?” I asked quickly. She looked at me, confused.

“We’ve discovered that one of the children in this classroom has lice,” she said.

She went on about a nurse inspecting all the other children’s heads, and the dress-up clothes and stuffed animals being bagged up and sent out for washing, and blah blah I have no idea what… because all I really heard her say was lice.

LICE.

I’ve never had lice, nor have my kids or anyone else in my family. But I know of women who practically had to check themselves into a mental hospital after dealing with the nasty little bugs. To hear them speak, you’d think they were tiny harbingers of the Apocalypse. Oh, yes. I knew allllll about lice. And I wanted to keep that knowledge SECOND-HAND.

With an abrupt “‘Bye now!” to the teachers, I hustled Bruiser out of his preschool and immediately checked his head in the bright sunlight of the parking lot. Mercifully, his scalp was lice– and nit— free. I said a quick prayer of thanksgiving, strapped him into his seat, and headed to his sister’s school to pick her up. And as we waited in the car rider pick-up line, my own scalp began itching. Uncontrollably.

I was about to become very well-acquainted with GHOST LICE.

(Don’t even pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about.)

In fact, ghost lice haunted my household all that weekend. Each time one of my kids so much as touched their heads, I was rushing them off to a window, peering through their thick strands of hair for evidence of tiny bugs. Meanwhile, I lay awake at night, scratching my head and imagining that my scalp was host to thousands of six-legged parasites.

Ewwwwwwww.

After several days of checking scalps and hair spraying heads each morning before school, I was satisfied that even our ghost lice had departed. But then I got some disturbing new information.

ANOTHER kid in Bruiser’s class had lice.

“Some of our other preschool classrooms have been affected, too,” the teacher admitted, a little shamefully. She lowered her voice. “It’s all because of the public school,” she stage whispered. “So many of our children here have older siblings in the public school.” She said the words ‘public school’ in the same way one might say ‘vomit-encrusted urinal.’

I guess she forgot that Bruiser’s sister attends that vomit-encrusted urinal.

And I guess that she didn’t know that I would put my daughter’s public vomit-encrusted urinal up against any of the … private urinals… in this town. Also? I’ve now had three children attend elementary school at the vomit-encrusted urinal she was referring to and NOT ONCE have I heard of anyone there getting head lice.

….I’m starting to regret this analogy now.

Anyway, I thought of many ways to respond to that preschool teacher. For example: “What are you saying, exactly? Are you saying that head lice can’t afford private school?”

Instead, I just smiled and said, “Bless your heart.”

“Public schools,” I muttered under my breath as Bruiser and I left the building. “What the heck.” And then I scratched my head, reflexively. The ghost lice were back. “Dammit,” I said through clenched teeth.

“What you said, Mommy?” Bruiser asked beside me.

“I said ‘Can it!'” I told him. “That’s what we can do with any extra fruit we pick this summer! CAN IT!”

After this second lice-spotting in Bruiser’s classroom, I debated taking him out of school for a few days in order to avoid what was clearly a lice infestation at his private school. Caving to the temptation of having a few child-free hours to myself each week, though, I continued sending him in, checking his hair each day until a few weeks had passed and I was satisfied that the worst was over.

A few days ago, my lice-free son and I headed over to the vomit-encrusted urinal to have lunch with my daughter. As I was signing in at the front desk, I stopped short when I saw one of the secretaries behind the desk bent over while another one carefully pieced through her hair. The realization of what they were doing hit me. My scalp started itching again.

“You’re okay,” the secretary told the woman as she stood up again. She looked over at me. “But you’ll probably want to put your hair in a ponytail before you go to lunch. We’re telling everyone to do it today.” She threw up her hands. “Suddenly, we have a lice problem.”

“And I know exactly where it came from,” I told them.

“You do?”

“Cumberland Valley Preschool,” I told them, smirking. “Totally infested.”

“Eww,” the secretary said.

“I know,” I said, shaking my head. “Those private preschools are lice havens.”

 

Image via Eran Finkle/Flickr

 

A note to locals: To avoid confusion, please note that his post is intended to be a humorous account of a problem that just about every mom and teacher has to deal with at some point: LICE. Please also note that I love my son’s preschool, I love his teachers, I love my daughter’s public school, and would enthusiastically encourage anyone to send their kids to either place. I do, however, hate LICE. And if you’re offended by my lice aversion, well, I can’t help you.