“You’re telling me they can send a man to the moon,” Sandy shouted in Lisa’s ear when she picked up the phone, “but there’s no cure for head lice?”
Sandy was at the end of her rope. This was her first experience with head lice and she was practically cross-eyed from scouring the heads of her four children. In just two days, she spent $75 on shampoo and combs at the drugstore, had done fifteen loads of laundry, suffocated nineteen stuffed animals in a garbage bag, and she was still finding countless little white nits stubbornly clinging to her children’s fine hair.
“Lisa, this is it. I’m getting out the hair clippers,” she threatened, a rising tone of frenzy now present in her voice. Sandy’s boys would look adorable with buzz cuts, but Lisa said she was concerned that the girls might look like they’d been through a war.
“They are in a war, Lisa,” Sandy shrieked, “This is my war…me versus head lice!”
Lisa was a veteran of the head lice war and she’d felt these same battle scars. After weeks of treatment, her own daughter was recently proclaimed “nit free” by the school nurse. At the time, the intensive treatments had put Lisa into the same frenzy that Sandy was now experiencing. There were hours and hours of combing, shampooing, and picking, not to mention the laundry.
“Lisa, you’re drafted. How soon can you get over here and help me comb the kids’ hair?” Sandy implored.
“Ummm…Sandy…. I have a dentist appointment right now that I really don’t want to miss. Gotta go!” Lisa hung up the phone, sweat beginning to form on her brow. Keeping her secret hidden was not easy, especially when General Sandy was on the warpath. How much longer could she keep this ruse going?
The truth was Lisa, an attractive 35-year-old woman with healthy shiny hair, also had head lice.
