From the Archives - Holiday Newsletter About HEAD LICE! GROSS!

Introduction

I have a tradition of mailing out a highly unconventional holiday newsletter.  The original setup was to figure out the most humiliating thing I’d done all year and describe it in excruciating detail.  Some years I satirized the newsletter form itself, by making myself or my family out to be egomaniacal, or claiming to be really disappointed in my kids.  After the family editorial panel (i.e., my wife) censored a couple of editions (such as this one), I toned things down a bit.

Here’s the edition from 2011, which I didn’t originally post to this blog for fear of embarrassing my family.  However, I have decided to post it now, and you are free to read it if you’ll promise me one thing:  whether or not you get to the end, please scroll down and read the epilogue, added today.  (Obviously I have no way to hold you to this promise.  You’re on the honor system.)

From the Archives – December 2011 Holiday Newsletter

Season’s Greetings!

I’ve been doing these newsletters for awhile now and I know the drill:  a quick recap of the year, some tidbits about how the kids are progressing, perhaps a wistful observation about the treadmill of time, etc.  But this year I’m struggling, as I’ve become fixated on a specific topic and cannot focus on anything else.  So I better just get that topic out of the way to free up my brain for the more standard tidings.

The topic is head lice.  I’m quite certain that for the rest of my life, whenever I look back at 2011 I’ll think, “Oh, yeah, the year we all got infested.”  Oh, go ahead and snicker.  I always used to, when I’d hear about some kid failing his lice spot-check at school.  Actually, I’d snicker but also wince, acknowledging (but not really believing) that my kid could be next.  Why do we snicker?  Probably out of contempt.  Everybody knows that having lice means you’re filthy.  Not just filthy, but a filthy outsider.  Who can consider the word “lice” without immediately thinking of all those immigrants being quarantined at Staten Island after failing their lice checks?  (As it turns out, it’s an unfair stereotype.  Lice actually prefer a nice clean scalp to a dirty, oily one.  I  know, I know:  sounds exactly like what a louse-infested troll would say.)

Fortunately, my kids didn’t fail a spot-check at school.  Erin discovered the lice herself.  Of course that doesn’t make the infestation any less disgusting, but at least we were spared some disgrace.  (When your scalp is teeming with parasites you get pretty good at looking at the bright side.)  I don’t know how Erin happened to spot the lice, though once she pointed them out I couldn’t not see them.  The eggs had amassed into something like a cobweb woven into our child’s scalp.  Erin extracted a full-grown louse, teasing it with a toothpick until its bloodlust led it to climb on, perhaps en route to Erin’s own locks.  She flung the louse into the sink and the little bastard was so engorged with our daughter’s blood that it exploded on impact, the blood gradually oozing toward the drain, like a Sam Peckinpah vignette in miniature.

I rapidly began a cycle of grief, skipping right past denial (I mean, how could I deny this?) and going directly to anger.  I vowed to exterminate these lice with extreme prejudice.  I told Erin, “If the lice bring knives, we’re bringing guns.  If they bring guns, we’re bringing napalm.  It is on.”  Actually I probably said something less macho.  Likely I was silent for a spell as the heebie-jeebies hit me full on.  Once you’ve seen lice in the hair of your beloved offspring—the same offspring you snuggle with on a regular basis—you cannot help but feel the awful tickly sensation of hundreds of lice in your own hair.  You begin scratching your head like a maniac.  Your body goes through series of shudders from the head down.

I was serious about the no-holds-barred warfare, though.  The trouble is, a parent can’t just decide things unilaterally.  I had to convince Erin to bring out the big guns, which was challenging because she won’t even take Advil for a headache.  We discussed the matter at length and researched all manner of home remedies and commercial anti-lice products.  Finally it came down to a binary choice:  either we use RID, an expensive but market-leading anti-lice shampoo, or nothing.

In the event, Erin deftly slipped between the horns of the dilemma by buying RID but not using it.  Her rationale, based on the fine print she read on the box, was that some strains of lice are impervious to RID, and she didn’t want to risk irritating our kids’ scalps if the shampoo wasn’t even a sure thing.  I hit upon a strategy of trying it out on myself to see if it’s hard on the scalp, but then I read the even finer print and discovered that you shouldn’t use it if you’re allergic to ragweed, which I just so happen to be.  Erin did use the chintzy plastic lice comb that it came with, so at least we couldn’t return the RID.

Lice infestation is hard on a marriage.  It ended up falling to Erin to comb out the kids’ hair looking for nits (eggs or leftover egg casings), nymphs (immature lice—isn’t this disgusting?), and adult lice.  She decided she had to be the one to do it because I was obviously useless at it, being unable to find anything on her head.  Since I’m normally pretty good at detail work, she took my incompetence to be a sign of not trying, and, by extension, of not caring.  Of course, she couldn’t find anything on my head either, but she figured that was because I have too little hair left for a louse to bother with.

Since she couldn’t do her own lice check, Erin found a head lice spa to go to.  It took me by surprise that such a business could exist, but of course I should have known.  Off Erin went to this insanely expensive place where they gave her green tea, played New Age music, said soothing things, and petted her head a lot.  They offer no guarantee of any kind that their techniques are effective.  (If this had been a business catering to guys it’d be like smogging your car, where there’s a money-back guarantee.)  About the only good thing I can say about the spa is that the lousseuse told Erin, “You owe your husband an apology.  I can’t find anything either.”  She finally ended up finding one little speck that could have been a nit.  Of course, it could have been a fleck of sawdust, the broken-off tip of an eyelash, or something the lousseuse herself planted there.  She sent Erin home with a gorgeous stainless steel designer lice comb.

Thus began a nightly ritual of Erin getting the kids’ hair wet and running the lice comb through their scalps, squinting at the varicolored specks that would be dislodged, and cursing the whole affair.   I cannot fathom how the term “nitpicking” came to mean “showing too much concern with insignificant details” because ridding our scalps of nits now seemed all-important. We took other measures too.  For example, I put Lindsay’s teddy bear, in a gallon-size Ziploc, in the freezer overnight.  Whether due to the cold or because I forgot to leave an air hole, when I retrieved the bear in the morning it was dead.  Please don’t tell Lindsay.  I also froze my helmet pads, and we did outrageous, climate-changing amounts of laundry.  Erin even decided, in a particularly frantic moment, to give Alexa a short haircut.  Alexa was fairly stoic about this, but poor Lindsay was heartbroken about the loss of her heroic big sister’s glorious long locks.  (I felt sheepish witnessing this show of sympathy.  When I was a kid, I always took great pleasure in my brothers’ misfortunes.)

Perhaps our most disturbing treatment was slathering our heads in über-expensive lotion and then wrapping them in plastic shower caps, which we’d seal up tight like gaskets, before bed.  All night, every time your head would move, there’d be this crackling, ripping sound like a martial arts guy makes.  The idea is to suffocate the adult lice, terrify the nymphs, and poach the eggs.  Or something like that; I was never that clear on what louse phase this treatment targeted.  All I know is that you have to destroy the lice in all their life stages or the cycle will never end.

If you ever find yourself with a family-wide lice infestation, don’t expect any sympathy from friends ... mine just seemed completely grossed out.  A colleague instant-messaged me one morning and said, “How’s the treatment going?”  I wrote back, “Lousy.”  I thought I’d at least get an LOL out of that, but nothing.  No sense of humor on this sordid topic.

We’d discovered the lice in February, and over the next four months we went through everything from despondent denial (“The lice must be gone by now”), to paralysis (“I know the kids have lice but I’m too tired to deal with it”), to fear (“Could this lotion be hard on the kids’ skin?”), to fury (see above), and then to resignation:  “We won’t be rid of the lice until summer because everybody at the school must have it.”

So what finally worked?  Well, I’d like to edify you with the inspiring tale of how we finally won the War On Lice, but the fact is, we never did prevail.  In the end, the lice just left us.  It was like we suddenly weren’t good enough for them anymore.  Of course we were relieved, but I had to work through some abandonment issues.  Plus, we still can’t believe they’re really gone:  every itch becomes a tickle that spawns paranoia, and just last night Erin was combing Lindsay’s hair after a bath and suddenly said, “You’ve got to be kidding me.  That better not be lice.”

Well, I see I’m out of room.  I had meant to write more, and on some cheerier topics, but that’s how it goes.  All of us Alberts wish you a wonderful, parasite-free holiday!

Epilogue

Well, the lice did come back—in full force.  In despair, we hired a lice removal specialist who made house calls.  If you think this sounds expensive, you’re exactly right.  But we (i.e., Erin) just didn’t have the energy to do the combing anymore, and were sick of failing at it.  Well, the expert went at somebody’s head for about five minutes and announced, “There’s no lice here.”  Erin, disbelieving, located some lice on the head in question and pointed it out.  “That’s not lice, that’s dandruff,” the expert said.  She brought out some samples of actual lice, in little Ziploc bags, and showed us.  Sure enough, Erin hadn’t been seeing anything like that on anyone’s head.  Thus was solved the mystery of how we were never able to get rid of the lice—they simply never existed (other than the single blood-gorged louse we’d found early on).

So did I mention this in the next year’s holiday newsletter, or mail around an addendum?  Nope.  I guess all our friends and family believe, to this day, that we’re a bunch of filthy outsiders spreading this hideous plague across our community.  Oh well.

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Fiction - Rough Drafts From Maynard Steele

NOTE:  This post is rated R for mild strong language.

Introduction

What follows is a work of fiction.  No person, place, thing, body, corporation, or institution described, mentioned, alluded to, subtly insinuated, or imagined herein has any relation to anything in the real world—past, present, or future.

Side note:  several of my readers have asked if I have a photo of my friend Maynard Steele.  I was able to find a stock photo (which I think is a still from one of his movies).  Here it is.  (If you don’t see a photo below, it’s because Maynard asked me to remove it.  He’s kind of weird that way.)

Drafts from Maynard

My friend Maynard Steele got a letter last week from his kid’s school, the Midvale Public Middle School for the Non-Gifted.  The letter advised that, owing to school policies and the laws of the state, any child absent for more than ten days during the school year will have to present a doctor’s note for any subsequent absences, and that Maynard’s son Bruce had already missed ten days.  Thus (the letter went on), Maynard was on the hook for a doctor’s note next time his son got sick.

Maynard was livid, and immediately sat down and wrote a reply to the principal, Mr. Smith.  Maynard wasn’t sure he’d hit the right notes with the letter, though, and tried another.  He couldn’t decide whether to fight the ridiculous rule or subvert it somehow, so he tried a lot of different angles.  Then he sent the whole batch of drafts to me, requesting my opinion.  I don’t care to get involved with his affairs, but I figured I could post the drafts here and have you vote on them using the Comments section below.

Draft #1

Dear Mr. Smith,

I have received your letter about the ten absences and the requirement of a doctor’s note.  If the rule pertained to ten consecutive days of illness, I could understand.  I mean, that’s a very sick kid.  But ten absences total?  So, if my kid has a minor cold, just bad enough to keep him home from school, I now have to take him to the doctor?  And waste that doctor’s valuable time, and waste my money, and rack up bogus charges for my insurance company?  No thanks.  I’ll just send my kid to school sick, and if he coughs all over his classmates and causes an epidemic, I’ll take solace in this being your fault, not mine.  (I’ll bet this policy is why my kid gets sick so much, come to think of it.)

Regretfully,

Maynard Steele

Draft #2

Dear Mr. Smith,

I have received your letter about ten absences and a doctor’s note, and regret that I cannot comply with your policy because doing so would insult my intelligence.  Frankly, the letter itself has already insulted my intelligence, and—seeing as to how it’s a rather humble intelligence to begin with—it can’t take much more in the way of insults.  Please accept my apologies in advance for sending my child to school sick going forward.  Also, please accept my child’s apology for, on those days, misbehaving badly enough to be sent to your office and for coughing all over you.  He’s never himself when he’s sick, especially when forced to attend school anyway.

Alas,

Maynard Steele

Draft #3

Dear Mr. Smith,

I cannot adhere to your ten-absences = doctor’s note policy on the grounds that it is completely fucking retarded.

Maynard

P.S.  With the sentence above I meant no offense to any child who is actually mentally retarded.  It is an unfortunate fact that our language is full of unfair expressions that get trotted out when people are riled up.  Anyway, let’s keep this letter between you and me for that reason alone.

Draft #4

Dear Mr. Smith,

I have received your letter, about my son’s ten non-consecutive absences and the need for a doctor’s note going forward.  I hope you can appreciate that I am a man of principle, and take my parenting very seriously.  Therefore, it is impossible for me to adhere to your absence policy.

Among the things I strive to teach my son is the importance of “natural consequences,” by which I mean that an undesirable behavior should not lead to a seemingly random punishment.  For example, if Bruce hits his sister, that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t get dessert, because dessert has nothing to do with violent behavior.  (A more natural consequence would be not getting to play violent video games anymore.)  For me or my wife to have to drag Bruce to the doctor for a minor cold, simply because he’s been sick a few times during the last five months, is not a natural consequence of anything, as professional medical attention has nothing to do with the number of days for which your school is compensated by the state.  Meanwhile, no child should be punished for getting sick.

For us to adhere to your policy would be rewarding it, which is completely inappropriate.  The natural consequence of your decreeing this pointless procedure is for me to defy it openly.  As such, you will never see a doctor’s note from me, regardless of how much more school Bruce may miss.  It is only out of a desire not to model passive-aggressive behavior that I’m notifying you of my non-compliance in advance.

Sincerely,

Maynard Steele

cc.  Bruce Steele

Draft #5

Dear Mr. Smith,

This letter attests to the fact of Bruce Steele’s illness.  I saw him in my medical clinic today and that kid is really fucking sick.  In fact, he may suffer relapses here and there for the rest of the school year and this letter attests in advance to the authenticity of those absences as well.

Sincerely,

Bruce’s Doctor

Draft #6

Dear Mr. Smith,

I have not seen Bruce Steele in my clinic, because I live in another state.  He may or not be legitimately ill, but I understand you need a doctor’s note for some reason.  I went to school with Bruce’s father, Maynard, so am happy to do him this favor.  Please note my official seal below and file this letter with the state according to whatever bureaucratic process they require.

Officially,

Michael Rogers, MD

Draft #7

Dear Mr. Smith,

I have received your letter about needing a doctor’s note if my son misses any more school due to illness.  However, I also have on file a letter from last year about a school-wide lice infestation, and the necessity of keeping my child home if I find any lice in his scalp.

As you know, an infestation is not the same thing as an illness.  Head lice is not treated by any branch of the medical industry.  Therefore, I can easily sidestep your patently stupid policy by reporting Bruce’s next illness as lice infestation.  That makes a lot more sense than dragging my kid to a pestilence-filled doctor’s office when we all know there’s no cure for the common cold.

I am writing because I wouldn’t want my son to be ostracized by his peers or your staff for having head lice, especially if he doesn’t.  Thus, I request that you keep his so-called lice on the down-low.  You can think of this discretion as a personal favor to me, or as a way to make sure I don’t spread any rumors about you and Ms. Bangles, the PE teacher.  (Bruce has told me how awkward it is when you openly ogle Ms. Bangles.)

Regards,

Maynard Steele

Draft #8

Dear Mr. Smith,

With your recent letter you have gotten between a mother bear and her cub.  Obviously, your policy of requiring a poor kid with the flu to be driven across town to a doctor’s office and be prodded with ice-cold instruments, all in the service of your paperwork with the state, is a violation of every student’s constitutional rights.  As a full-time homemaker whose kids are outgrowing her, I have nothing better to do than mount a public and highly visible campaign against your school and its draconian rules.  Meanwhile, I expect you do have better things to do than suffer a protracted, embarrassing, and distracting war with me over this.  If so, you can avoid all that unpleasantness by simply looking the other way the next time little Bruce is out sick.

If you think I’m bluffing, just try me.  I think you’ll find me a formidable opponent.

Regards,

Wanda Steele

Fiction - The Lice Letters

NOTE:  This post is rated PG-13 for an instance of mild strong language.

Introduction

What follows is a work of fiction.  The normal disclaimers apply.  Even the language used, though it bears a strong resemblance to American English, is made-up and used fictitiously.  The single reference to an actual person is purely jocular.

The Lice Letters

Midvale Elementary School

3312 Bean St

Anytown, USA

February 27, 2012

Dear Parent,

Yesterday, a student in your child’s classroom was discovered with a case of Pediculosis Capitis (head lice).

Pause for a moment and let that sink in.  I, too, feel it like a hard ball in the pit of my stomach.  This is a serious matter.  But rest assured, it was not your child who was discovered to have this condition.  If it was, you would be well aware by now.  The child in question was sent home immediately and I’m sorry to say his mother was not able to pick him up.  She was at work and sent her boyfriend, Steve, in her place.  This did not make it any easier on the child, I hasten to add.  Steve—who is on the “approved guardian” list in the office—was able to come right away because he is unemployed and probably spends his days playing violent video games.  I would like to take this opportunity to downplay the altercation some of you may have heard transpired when Steve came to the school.  It was merely a loud exchange of words:  our custodian innocently pointed out to Steve that his (Steve’s) P.T. Cruiser shares the chassis and engine of the Dodge Neon (which happens to be true), and Steve did not take it well.  No assault actually transpired and nobody was taken into custody.

Though your child was not discovered to have head lice, he or she yet may.  Lice spreads quickly at schools because of the jostling and other physical contact that persist among children.  You should prepare yourself for the possibility that your child will be next.  If this does happen, rest assured that head lice does not mean your child is “unclean,” “filthy,” or an “unwanted immigrant.”  Every year a few million Americans—born American—come down with head lice.  Many of these people are quite clean in their habits.  In fact, some studies show that blown-dry and/or chemically treated hair makes a less hospitable environment for lice.  As such, the school is relaxing its prohibition of brightly colored hair among students (though I still have trouble not snickering when I see a grade-school kid wearing a t-shirt featuring a rock band whose members are old enough to be his or her grandparent).  On a related note, if you have a daughter this might be a good time to turn her on to the music and style of Sinéad O’Connor.

There are simple precautions you can take against your child getting head lice.  If you have more than one child, make sure they don’t wear hats.  Even if they promise not to trade them around, they always do.  (Yes, one of our students is allowed to wear a hat at school.  That’s because, for medical reasons, he has a bald spot that the other kids would tease him about.)  Also, please  don’t allow your child to attend slumber parties, where pillows can be shared.  Though these precautions may help, the sad truth is that head lice is mainly a result of parents not loving their children enough.  (No, of course that’s not true, but since so many mothers would believe this anyway, I might as well say it.)

Please inspect your child’s head regularly.  Lice are hard to see, especially by fathers who a) don’t actually care very much, and b) tend to be so old, from what I’ve seen at this school, that they’re bound to be farsighted.  Look for “dandruff” that turns out to be alarmingly mobile, and the cobweb-like networks of eggs (nits) that collect at the base of the hair shaft like glue.  One other symptom would be a child who is falling behind in school.  This is because his or her brain is literally being sucked out by these little parasites (though it could also merely mean he or she watches a lot of TV).  Remember that it is far better to discover head lice at home than for our staff to discover it!  If you do discover lice, please keep your child home until the lice are completely eradicated.  You may fib and tell us your child is “sick,” and as necessary we will help perpetuate your cover story.

Every year there seems to be a lice outbreak at this school and we are determined to put an end to it.  To that end, we have decided to cancel this year’s Spring Fling, commonly known as “hot dog / crazy hat day,” if the lice are not controlled by early May.  You don’t have to be an epidemiologist to understand our rationale, given the opportunities for contagion presented by hundreds of kids wearing makeshift hats.  And while I’m on the subject:  assuming that the Spring Fling does take place, please tell your child not to ask if the hot dogs are grass-fed.  They aren’t, okay?  We don’t have the budget for grass-fed so every single frank represents dozens of cows from several continents and all the other atrocities Upton Sinclair wrote about.  (No, we won’t consider turkey franks, because they taste like ass.)  If you don’t like this, ask yourself what member of our generation didn’t grow up snacking on lead paint chips.  Get over yourself.  [Gloria—give this the usual tone-down but don’t take out the grass-fed thing, it’s important.]

Thank you in advance for you assistance in this important matter.

Sincerely,

C. Roger Nelson

Principal

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Midvale Elementary School

3312 Bean St

Anytown, USA

February 27, 2012

Dear Parent,

I am writing to apologize for the highly inappropriate letter that was sent home with your child earlier this week.  I have a highly unusual writing style—really more of a “venting” mechanism than anything—and rely heavily on my secretary to edit my letters for length and content.  The letter about head lice should have been edited down significantly, with certain details omitted, particularly the instance of crude language.  This letter “slipped through the cracks” in that my secretary never had the opportunity to edit it.  Somehow, the initial draft was sent out before she even saw it.

Of course much of my letter was inappropriate even for a rough draft and it is a huge embarrassment to me that my private snideness has become public.  All I can say in my defense is that it is hard to maintain the proper attitude when my scalp has the tickly sensation, almost certainly psychosomatic, of being infested with parasites.

The management of Midvale Elementary School, the District, and the Superintendent of Schools are working with the PTA to determine the appropriate disciplinary measures for my misconduct.  I hope that I shall be allowed to continue as your Principal.

Once again, please accept my humblest apologies for the letter.

Sincerely,

C. Roger Nelson

Principal

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Midvale Elementary School

3312 Bean St

Anytown, USA

February 27, 2012

Mr. David Ferguson

Superintendent of Schools

1123 Toll House Road

Anytown, USA

Dear Mr. Ferguson,

Yesterday I discovered that what had originally appeared to be an administrative error in the matter of the head lice letter was actually an act of perfidy on the part of my secretary, Gloria Johnston.  She actually did receive the rough draft, and though she had initially edited it per our normal arrangement, she subsequently propagated the initial draft.  What tipped me off was the little accent over the “e” in “Sinead.”  I do not even know how to type that special character.  That was one of her initial edits to the revised version, and the sole change that survived in the final version.

The fully edited version of my letter—the one that should have gone out—was found on Ms. Johnston’s computer.  When confronted she confessed to her treachery.  Her employment has been terminated.  We are trying to keep this affair as quiet as possible and have cited “budget cuts” as the reason for her dismissal.  In the event that members of your staff desire the “inside scoop” on this matter, I encourage you to suggest that Ms. Johnston was discovered to be a carrier of head lice and a long-time contributor to the frequent outbreaks.

I understand that my situation is, as yet, unresolved and will decorously accept whatever decision you hand down.

Sincerely,

C. Roger Nelson

Principal

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