April 7, 2000

2:05 PM

Love and lice, according to Lynda Barry. I remember the first time they came to our second grade class searching for lice. I had no idea what lice was, so I just played dumb and let them act like monkeys looking through my hair.
posted by veruca (4 comments total)

We called them 'nits' at our school. Everyone dreaded the 'nit nurse' with her scary metal comb (that pulled half your hair out) and bottle of mysterious blue liquid. The teachers always insisted that head lice preferred clean hair but somehow it was always the scruffy kids that had them.
posted by echelon at 3:41 PM on April 7, 2000

Lice were still sort of a badge of poverty when I was a kid (even if that was a touch inaccurate), but they've become a scourge in the last few years, affecting suburban schools sometimes to the extent that it's the major cause of absenteeism. Partly this is because the major lice treatment permethrin has become ineffective as lice have been "bred" to be resistant.
posted by dhartung at 4:46 PM on April 7, 2000

God, I think I'm in love w/ Lynda Barry... I always hated those chopstick-things they poked you with... not as bad as the hearing and eye tests with the scary old equipment from the fifties though...
posted by sonofsamiam at 11:22 AM on April 8, 2000

God, I think I'm in love w/ Lynda Barry... I always hated those chopstick-things they poked you with... not as bad as the hearing and eye tests with the scary old equipment from the fifties though...
posted by sonofsamiam at 11:25 AM on April 8, 2000