Note:  Chip originally populated this post with multiple, revolting head-lice pictures which I forced him to remove.  Phobia or no phobia, you don’t want to see them.

This is terrible confession and I know that it is ridiculous for a mother to have a phobia about this, what with all the terrible things that can afflict a child.  But I have a serious phobia about….head-lice.  Even writing these words has lead me to start scratching.

A little while ago I was in a state about a head-lice outbreak and of course shared with my colleagues and one colleague said, soothingly, as though by way of consolation, “oh it is just terrible isn’t it when something happens to the children, Tom has scabies at the moment and the poor lamb is just in agony”.  Scabies is an entirely different prospect.  I cannot even begin to think of the OCD rituals which would have to be imposed to deal with them.  My point is, that her take on it was a much more appropriate maternal response to a child’s ailment.  Than my own hysterical response to bugs.

Anyway, so about a month when Fred Ex’s current nanny (who has a fine head of very long and thick and curly hair) brought him home from tennis and casually announced “yeah, he’s got head-lice, it’s apparently going around the school”, I literally recoiled from her in horror.  She continued, “yeah, so I bought the de-licing conditioner and did it once”, and went on “but, yeah, you may have to do it again in a few days, just to be sure.  Yeah, I know because I remember getting them at school and it was just a nightmare.  God if I got them now, I would have to have my head shaved”.  But then sort of laughed carelessly as though, well, that’s life with children, no big deal.

“No”, I said firmly, “I can’t talk about this, I have a real fear of them.  I MEAN A REAL FEAR.  Any advice must be directed to Chip.  I can’t hear this”.  I think I started to put my fingers in my ears, but realised that even by my very highly strung antics, this was just a bridge too far.

 

Fred Ex sort of rolled his eyes because he has seen this every time there is an outbreak at school.  Funnel web spiders?  I can tolerate them.  Other bitey things.  OK.  (Australian snakes, not so much.)  But head-lice is something I just don’t do with either grace or courage.  I decline to even directly touch the fine-tooth hair comb that the pharmacist insisted we purchase after Fred Ex’s first bout.  Instead I have to use paper towel to put it into the dishwasher, when required.
I think I paid the nanny double what was owed to her, because, frankly, the thought of having to de-louse.  My own child.  Is repulsive to me.  And I literally cannot and will not do it.

I blame Miss Corry in 4th grade.  During one particularly persistent outbreak at St Archangel’s, Miss Corry had been called upon, somehow as part of her professional teaching duties, to inspect every child’s hair.  And this is absolutely my starkest memory of primary school.  More than all the fark carry-ons at a low-rent Adelaide Catholic school.

This weary looking 30 something woman, with a wooden ruler, going through every child’s hair.  Careful to rub her nose against her shoulder if it required itching, rather than potentially transferring head-lice if she used her hands.   Announcing who did, and who did not have head-lice.  And I was one of those pronounced to have nits.

The only other child fingered in my class was a strange little girl, Leanne Baxter, about whom we all harboured doubts as to hygiene.  And both of us were sequestered in the far corner of our classroom, out of lice jumping range from the other children.

Leanne sat there scratching, perfectly unconcerned by this turn of events.  But I was devastated.  It was a truly traumatic event in my early schooling career.

I cried all the way home.  And demanded that my mother check my thick black hair.  But my mother couldn’t find any.  Not one.  And then said, that lie always repeated with every infestation to console children like me:  ”love, they only go for clean hair.  So it really is a good thing, when you think about it”.  I thought nothing of the sort.  (But I have just spoken with my mad Scottish friend Heather about nits (it’s clearly an everyday conversation for me) apropos this oft-repeated claim.  And she said, to my surprise, that in fact this is true about crabs.  She apparently managed to acquire a bout of them in Paris some years ago, in circumstances not at all sexual, and her DR confirmed that in fact this is true.  Who knew?)

Dissatisfied with my mother’s inspection, I insisted we go to the DR.  To get a second opinion on whether or not Miss Corry was correct in her assessment.  We did.  To this day, I am still astonished by my mother acquiescing in this way and whenever I am tossing up taking Fred Ex to the DR on account of some trifling complaint for, I don’t know like chest pain, I think of my mother and am shamed into action. But the DR seemed bewildered that a mother was prepared to fork out $12.50 (in 1978 Australian dollars, so quite a lot in retrospect), just to avert a 9 year old child’s neurotic crisis.  This was up there with the no Catholic church in Goolwa meltdown.  There is absolutely no chance the Colonel (parsimonious at the best of times) would have wasted $12.50 on something this manifestly absurd.

So I marched off to school the next day, confident that all my peers would clearly prefer the opinion of a qualified DR over that of Miss Corry. Who really did seem to enjoy the power a little too much.  Like the hanging judge who decides which person shall swing.  And which shall be spared.  In my mind’s eye, she has sort of morphed into a Prisoner screw.  (And a nasty one at that, not Meg)

But my school-mates weren’t buying it.  Although my primary school BFF did try to comfort me by whispering that at least I only had nits and not full-blown head-lice infestation, unlike Leanne, whom my BFF confidently predicted “had a whole family in there.  I mean there are mothers and babies hanging out in that dirty, knotty bird’s nest”.  It was kindly meant, but not of much assistance to me.  And her body language spoke volumes.  She didn’t get too close, no doubt wary that my hitherto benign nit eggs may have hatched and were waiting to spring into her beautiful, ribboned and lice-less pigtails.

So of course began my ritual of every morning and night having my hair checked by my mother.  This began in 1978 and continued until approximately 1984, well into my high school years at Stigmata Ladies College.  And my mother enabled the whole phobia, by continuing to check, rather than telling me to shut the fuck up and behave like a normal child.  Or at least a child who was frightened of something substantial.  Say, the funnel web spider, for which, at that time, there was no anti-venom.  As a consequence of which quite a few children died every year.  Funnel web spider deaths and lice infestations – these are the stuff of my childhood memories.

But my mother, wisely, also used my phobia to her advantage.  Like when I asked about getting a cat.  ”But you couldn’t Quesera” she said.  ”Surely you know that’s where head-lice come from?”  She shook her head sadly as though this were a source of pain to her.  But really she just hated cats.

What the FUCK?  No one had ever told me that before.  I had been touching cats for years with impunity.  Is that where Leanne got them from and from there infected the entire school community?  Plainly a cat was now out the question.

Through Stigmata Ladies College I worked as a shop assistant at a pharmacy and whenever a customer came in and asked for head-lice shampoo and conditioner, I did not ever decline to serve them.  Not once, no matter how much I wanted to run screaming from the shop.  No, I always strived to be professional and diligent.  But right after I had finished with them, I went immediately to the dispensary out the back to wash my hands with the pharmaceutical grade disinfectant.

So fast-forward to my second year at uni, when I got a job at a child-care centre.  This was very lucrative, in comparison with, I don’t know, working in a shop.  And I was quite happily hanging out with kids (but with the lice fear still bubbling under the surface) rather than serving cranky middle-aged customers at a large department store.  Until there was the inevitable outbreak.  I had been careful up until that point NOT to let any children climb on me. And if they did, I made sure my head was as far away as possible. Without dropping them of course.

But what with every other child and most of the staff succumbing to these beastly little fuckers, I had no choice.  I would return to my job at the department store.  Earning half of what I earned minding children.  The danger money wasn’t anywhere near enough for me to tolerate the prospect of infestation.

The director of the child care centre was incredulous.  ”Let me get this straight.  You are quitting this job, because you may get head-lice?  And you want to go back to earn half what you are earning here. Standing all day, packing shelves, in retail-hell shift work?”

Yes ma’am I do.  The customers may have been shitty and demanding, but there was little chance they were going to have me scratching my head and succumbing to drink at 4pm in the afternoon.  Which is what I am doing right now.

When the outbreaks first started at Fred Ex’s child care centres, I immediately acquainted Chip with my phobia and insisted he had to take full responsibility for this particular aspect of Fred Ex’s life.  Sometimes I wonder if this is his greatest parenting gift to me.  Other times I think he quite enjoys it – embracing his return to primate grooming behaviour.

Of course, my phobia is coupled with my OCD which meant all sorts of rituals had to be adopted.

First of all, I pretty much cut off all physical contract with Fred Ex.  I was only thinking the other week that I really have to explain to him (if he hasn’t figured it out already) why it is that I sort of duck out of the way whenever he tries to get near my head, because otherwise he is (I am?) going to spend a fortune in therapy.  I look forlornly at those children who run up to their mothers and gaily through their arms around their mothers’ necks – all of them laughing, without a care.  Because Fred Ex just knows if he tries that I am going to stand bolt upright and say “not your hair on me, not your hair“.

He is not even permitted, at lice-less times, to sit on “my sofa”.  If he happens to defy this directive, I have to issue a stern reproach and he is instructed to move immediately.  Then I have to swap all the cushions around.  And then wait half an hour before I can sit on the sofa again.  Because years ago a girl from school, knowing my “issues”, sent me a link to the Department of Education’s special site dealing exclusively with head-lice.  And it clearly states that head-lice and nits can only live for 30 minutes without a living “host”.

Same with the phone.  Fred Ex is not permitted to get the phone, unless I can see the number and I know it’s for him.  Because if he gets it, and it’s for me, I have to carefully wipe it down.  Just to make sure that any of the critters – that are lurking and lying low, in the hopes of finally, after years of yearning, getting into my thick hair – are squashed.  Which means I have to sort of laugh off-handedly when I get on the phone, and pretend I was fumbling with it. Not fucking cleaning it with a Dettol anti-bacterial wipe.

And once I know they are in the house, it is so much worse.  If ever Chip happens to be sick when an outbreak occurs, I can’t insist he check my hair.  Which is what happened last month.  Though usually that is what eventually happens, because I just badger til he gives in, death-bed or not.  I do feel bad about this, but I can’t help myself.  I once even persuaded my old secretary to check my head, when Chip refused once too often.  I am reasonably certain this was not part of her professional duties.  But strangely, head-lice came up at work shortly thereafter when a former colleague told us all how his entire family, including him, had recently had them.  He seemed quite upbeat about it, even though he had very tightly curled hair, which frankly must have provided quite the safe haven.  I really had to think twice about standing too close to him after that.  Sometimes I idly wonder what the fuck I am going to do in the event that Chip is infested.  I may have to outsource his de-lousing to the nanny as well.

Anyway, Middle Sister has also been prevailed upon for inspection duties, particularly given she is a teacher.  But I am not absolutely sure I can trust her.  Because when my niece Charlotte had them a few years ago she concealed it from me, for some weeks.  As she knew exactly what my reaction would be.  Complete boycott of all family events other than major holidays.  And even they are up for concession if all the children are infested.  (Given what you will read below, I think I should have enforced the boycott this year.)

A few years ago, during the first full-scale attack, I was on the phone to Mariska, sort of in a state fretting about the whole head-lice fuckery.  But then, by way of comfort (to me), I said “oh well Shaun cut my hair on the weekend, so I must be ok.  He would have told me”.  But Mariska said nothing at all in agreement.  She merely offered in response: “you go to a posh salon and Shaun wouldn’t want to offend you.  You might never go back”.

I didn’t say anything for some time, as I glumly pondered this.  The woman who sent me the link to the Education Department website said her children had been run out of a salon when they had head-lice, so I have always adopted that as an article of faith. Hairdressers will come clean or at least furtively wipe their hands and put them nowhere near their own heads, so you can just sort of tell if you had them without them having to say anything.  This friend had also suggested casually, when I brought the whole wretched subject up for the umpteenth time, that “some kids get them, while their siblings don’t.  Maybe Fred Ex won’t?”  I went to bed that night and wished, not for Fred Ex to be clever or nice, but to be A Nit-Free Zone.

Last month when Fred Ex had them, he had come home from the low-brow CheapCuts’n'Kids hair salon, his hair duly cut.  And I suspect, with some foundation, that that’s where that whole outbreak began.  Despite dismissing this possible source out of hand, Chip nevertheless seemed to get the whole thing under control.

Until last night.  That is, approximately 4 days after Christmas Day, which Fred Ex had spent with his cousins. I noticed Fred Ex scratching alarmingly often and asked him to please move away from my chair. Now.  He continued with the scratching today.  And when I asked him if he thought he had head-lice he scratched his head and thoughtfully predicted that, yes indeed, he believed he did.

But I was sort of distracted from nagging Chip to do anything about it because the Oklahoma City Thunder were having a Western Conference Finals re-match with the Dallas Mavericks and I was all just:  ”la-la-la I can’t hear or see you scratching Fred Ex, but do NOT come near me”.

For those of you who did not see it, this was a particularly thrilling NBA game.  1.5 seconds to go.  The Thunder must win on a buzzer-beater.  Hopefully by Kevin Durant.  I was peering through my eyes at the screen, not daring to really even watch.

And then it happened – KD made a buzzer beater and Fred Ex and I leapt out of our respective chairs, shrieking and whooping and carrying on.  Chip shushed us, but we continued, undaunted.  Then I slumped back on my sofa, exhausted by the efforts I had put in watching 10 handsome mean run about a basketball court for 48 minutes.

Somehow, Fred Ex appeared to interpret this situation as meaning it was likely that my phobia would go into hibernation – it being such a joyous moment for us both.  And jumped on me to continue the celebration.

The phobia was doing nothing of the sort.  Even at such a moment of pure elation, there was precious little chance his head was going to be allowed anywhere near mine.  I do not believe he was badly injured, but I basically shoved him off me and my sofa.  Although he indignantly pointed to some weeks-old cricket bruises on his legs subsequently, when I was wracked by mother-guilt for my actions asked him if he had been injured.  And insisted that yes, indeed he had been injured.

Now the shrieking had quite a different tone to it.   “What is the rule?  What is the rule?“, I shrieked.  ”You know your hair is not allowed on me  EVER.  A KD buzzer-beater does NOT give you a leave pass buddy, not now not EVER“.

Hence the drink right now is both celebrating the KD buzzer-beater.  But also to stop me scratching.