Lice ain't nice

I had a scare over the summer . . . a lice scare.

I didn't want to talk about it - in public, anyway - until I knew if it was just a scare or not.

I think I'm safe now.

Friends of mine, parent and child, stopped in to see me one day.  I had my trusty little hat on (I've been spelling it "took," but I'm told it's actually spelled "tuque," which looks silly to me).  The child, a boy of about ten or eleven, took (ah, that explains the spelling) the tuque off my head and put it on his own, and then returned it.  I thought nothing of it.

Three days later, I learned that there was a bit of lice problem in that household.

Lice like dreadlocks.  There's plenty of room from them to do their thing, a thing that involves laying eggs (nits) on hair follicles and making scalps itch as they eat skin cells (hopefully dead ones).  Normal lice shampoo can't be used safely on locked hair, because the stuff would have to stay on the head a lot longer and its toxic nature could harm the host.

So if you want to rid a head of locks of its lice, you're going to have to cut them, or spend a lot of hours with your head wrapped in plastic bags while various substances (like vinegar) kills the buggers.  And, since the nits are so tough, you'll have to do it again in a week to ten days after they hatch.

Lice removal is no fun when you've got dreadlocks.

I spent a lot of time peering closely at my hair, looking for the nits which are tiny little black specks, white once they hatch.  I worried every time I had an itch.  I have read a lot of information about what to do if I had them, and pondered if I wouldn't just give up and cut them off to avoid the hard work of preserving the locks while destroying the unwanted guests.

It was a . . . . lousy thing to have on my mind, but I'm over it.  I didn't get them.  But yikes, what a psychological smack it was to have to consider it.