A Louse-y Afternoon

Last spring, I got a call from the school nurse: your daughter may have head lice. I drove right to school, thankful that the situation was not more serious, but displeased at the idea of dealing with this parasitic insect so early in her academic career. My head started to itch. Ugh.   

On my way to pick her up, I called our pediatrician and asked what to do. I dreaded the idea of potent chemical treatments and was relieved by his suggestion of olive oil or mayonnaise. I knew I had olive oil in our kitchen, but what about the mayonnaise? I only had the low-fat kind and surely these circumstances called for full-fat Hellmann’s. I bought two large jars, a couple of nit combs, and six plastic showercaps. I was ready.

When we got home from school, I decided to treat both my children – and myself – to the greasy remedy. “It’s like going to a spa,” I told them. Though truly, I looked in their hair very carefully before dipping my fingers into the jar of mayo and saw nothing but a little silver glitter (the remnants of a messy craft project). No lice, no nits. Nevertheless, we slathered our hair with mayo and oil, tucked it under our shower caps and began the job of dealing with rugs, bed linens and stuffed animals.   

It was a busy afternoon, but there was a lot of laughing. Before bedtime, I took off their showercaps and marveled at the fact that with their slicked back hair they looked like little Robert Palmer girls of the 80s. All they needed was the red lipstick.  I washed their hair out and combed through it with the nit comb. Then I washed their hair again. And again. I should have used Dawn – you have no idea how difficult it was to get rid of the grease! I kept my hair under wraps until morning – I figured deeply conditioned hair would be the silver lining of this ordeal. And I kind of liked smelling like fried chicken.

So what did I learn from all of this? First of all, millions of kids get lice every year – it is not a big deal and it is not a sign that your child is dirty (actually, lice seem to prefer clean hair). As I walked my children from the school clinic to the car, I did feel as if we were wearing “Scarlet Ls” around our necks, but it was all in my head (pun intended). Nobody knew and, quite frankly, nobody cared. It’s another childhood rite of passage and as someone once said, “it’s no shame to get head lice, only to keep them.”