Got lice?

We do. Or we did. Boy-child was sent home from school yesterday after itching uncovered nits in his hair. I can't see them -- I had checked him a day before (because he was itching), and saw nothing. I mean, I can barely see them when people say, "Look. There. On the end of that comb tooth. Right there." I then do the middle-aged reach -- which is extending my arm so the hand holding the comb is 20+ inches from my face -- and then I can see the tiny less-wide-than-a-hair white speck of nit. If, that is, I'm under the full spectrum light, on high.

Picture is from the web. Creeps you out, huh?

So yesterday afternoon and evening were entirely spent de-lousing. Everything in the house that has touched a child's head (or the head of a person who's been near a child's head) must be washed in hot water and dried in hot air for at least 20 minutes, or put in a plastic bag for two weeks. That means all bed linens, cushions, hoodies, shirts, jackets, blankets, towels. Couches and chairs must be sprayed with a nasty-smelling bug killer (Boy-child has been practicing hand-stands recently, head down in the cushions, legs up in the air, You start to look at things differently when you're trying to figure out if a head has pressed up against them). I took a car load to the laundromat -- 11 washer loads. FeminaDommus ran a few here at home, too. The children were shampooed and medicated (uncovering more on Girl-Child than Boy, indicating perhaps the entryway into the household); HomoDommus shampooed and medicated, denying the whole time he needed it.

I have discovered a new etiquette challenge. I went to the gym and shampooed and medicated there, because our water heater is broken (we get only about one shower, or load of wash, an hour from it). I hadn't counted, at 8:30 at night on a Friday, on having company in the open shower area. Does one explain to the naked lady three feet away, under the neighboring shower head, that one is de-lousing oneself? I chose instead to stall, glorying in the unending supply of hot hot water, until they all left the room. Then I quickly applied the treatment, which smells of veterinarian's back rooms and bug spray, and hid away the bottle. Had anyone else joined me, during the 10 minutes I stood there twiddling my thumbs while the toxic treatment did its wonders, I was prepared to joke about these fancy hair products that refresh the moisture in your hair. Luckily no one showed up, and I didn't have to lie.

My head has been itching for weeks, and since the treatment the itching has mostly stopped. We found one nit on my head.

FeminaDommus and the Texan both put off their treatments until this morning, both convinced they have not been affected. FeminaDommus has been told her hair is too thick to support lice -- but just now she combed one out of her wet, post-treatment head today, "so big," reported HomoDommus, "it waved at me." (To which I replied, It wasn't waving, but drowning, since this was after the application of toxic materials. HomoDommus didn't catch the reference until I elbowed him, ruining the wittiness of the riposte.) He is now, in retrospect, totally wigged out by the experience, and I agree, my head has started itching again, in sympathy.

The children's friends have been phoned in warning. One family has already reported back that, after denying the possibility for a few hours, they discovered them on their son -- and were up until after midnight treating the household. We are not ground-zero -- several boys on the basketball team have reported in this week with buzz-cuts.

I don't remember lice being an issue when I was a child. One set of older nephew-niece struggled with them in their school in the early 1990s, and it's a constant fight in the schools here (last fall there was essentially a lockdown at Girl-Child's school, with all coats and hats stored in individual plastic bags every day to cut down on the spread of lice). FeminaDommus suggests that it is not a case of increased lice populations, but rather of diminished causes. No longer are children sent home and quarantined for polio or small pox or scarlet fever. There's a vaccine now for chicken pox. We should be grateful all we have to complain about are relatively harmless, itchy parasites.