Head cases

One of the big things about going back to school after the summer holidays is rediscovering all the characters you had forgotten for the previous couple of months. Like head lice.

 

I was reminded of those perennial fixtures of the childhood scalp during a discussion of the subject on Marian Finucane’s radio show, which revealed many obscure facts about head lice that I had been quite happy not knowing. For example (and I would advise the squeamish to skip the bullet points):

Thankfully, like Justin Bieber and bouncy castles, head lice seem to be an issue with children mainly between four and 10, so we appear to have left this itchy chapter of childhood behind.

 

But, oh, the memories!

 

My daughter has the kind of fine, slippery hair that head lice rub their tiny claws in glee over, so I spent about eight months of her senior-infants year rooting through her scalp like a deranged orang-utan. I spent a fortune on bottles of foul-smelling liquid that I slathered under shower caps before bedtime, she cried as the tiny teeth of the comb snagged on her roots, we had brief moments of victory with a buzzing device that electrocuted the little beasts on impact, but still the little eggs reappeared, glistening next to her scalp like the tiniest of pearls.

 

It got to the stage where I couldn’t look at those artful sprays of beaded branches you see in floral arrangements without scratching my scalp.

 

Her hair is now almost waist-length, and she spends hours perfecting her fishtail plait and side fringe, so I suppose it won’t be long before she is flicking it in front of boys.

 

And you can’t treat those with a buzzing comb and a bottle of chemicals…