Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Lice and Crabs are Funny (when you don't have them)

My dear friend M's kid has lice. The idea of her kid having lice tickles me. He's in 3rd grade, and this is the first year that he's gone to public school. He used to go to this incredibly overpriced private school (his dad taught there) with a bunch of kids whose dads spend all their time working to make scads of money so the moms can drive their suv's to PotteryBarn, the botox shop, the pharmacy/liquor store, and soccer practice. Now that my friend's kid goes to school with the great, unwashed masses, he's got lice. I think that's funny.

On the other hand, a friend of a friend's kids gave lice to the governor's kids a couple years ago. (Let me say that I do NOT run in the governor's circle or any of the circle's adjacent to the governor's circle; in fact, I think I may run in a shape that's much less complex than a circle. I think I run in a line fragment.) I can't remember all the details, but the friend's kids went to a sleepover at the governor's house. They got lice before the sleepover but didn't discover it until after the sleepover, so the next day the mom had to call the governor's wife and tell her to check her kid for lice. As I remember it, there was a little lice epidemic among the pre-teen socialites for a few weeks. I think that's funny, too.

When M emailed me to tell me about her kid having lice, she said that she had been to Walgreen's 3 times to buy various de-lousing products. She said that the last time she shopped in that aisle she had crabs. I remember that guy. It's damn lucky crabs is all she got.

Once I got crabs at Kinko's. People don't believe me, but it's true. It was the first day of school back when I was a graduate assistant and had only been teaching for a couple of semesters. I was nervous because my first class was about to start, and I was at Kinko's picking up some documents that I was going to pass out in the class, but since I was nervous, I had to pee. I went to the bathroom at Kinko's and it was really gross. Then I walked across the street to the building I was teaching in and went to the bathroom again (I pee a lot when I'm nervous), and there it was, a crab on my panties. I really did get crabs at Kinko's--and for the record that's the only time I've ever had crabs--and I only had one. So I guess I got a crab at Kinko's.

I did have lice in 2nd grade, though. All the V's and W's had it. This one girl, whose last name was Vonda, if I remember correctly gave them to me and Dick Whittle (I shit you not, that was his name). Vonda (maybe that was her first name, and her last name also started with a V?) had to have her head shaved she got them so bad. I went home and gave them to my brother, so Mom had to wash everything a million times and comb the nits out of our hair for days.

This post is making my head itch.

When I told my daughter H that M's son has lice, she said, "Oh! Victor has lice, too!" I was, like, WHAT?!?! Shouldn't we have been given some kind of notice that a kid in her class has lice? So I said, "Is he going to school? How do they keep the rest of you kids from getting it?" She replied, "Well, we just don't touch his head." Problem solved.