The Golden Age of Head Lice Returns to Schools | The American Spectator

I’m writing this with a helmet on, constantly looking around for any signs of them closing in. I’ve just been handed a chilling fact: one in five children gets head lice during the school year. And as you know, the school year is just starting. Nothing terrifies me more than head lice. You might think a hungry bear or a raging lion is more dangerous, but you’d be wrong. There is no wilder creature on Earth than an angry louse. And most lice are angry — among other reasons, because the life of a louse leaves much to be desired.

Far from the lofty metaphors of romantic poetry, living inside someone else’s head has never been much fun. Lice wake up in the morning and, out of habit, don’t bother to wash. That’s why they get cranky when the “building” they live in suddenly decides to step under a shower. They try calling the landlord to complain, but he never picks up. Lice can’t really talk to anyone, except fleas. And believe me, no flea on Earth has anything interesting to say beyond: “I’ve just broken my long jump record,” “Looks like I’ll have to change dogs,” or “You’re as fat as a fly” (a very common insult among fleas). In any case, you won’t find anything in basic flea literature that helps solve the domestic problems of lice.

It’s true that the life of fleas doesn’t make lice envy them much, but at least fleas spend their days jumping around, which makes them think they’re having fun — though honestly, being condemned to a life of endless hopping must be dreadful. There are days when you just don’t feel like bouncing around like an idiot in the middle of a hiccup. Between leaps, fleas always seem to be searching for a cliff to throw themselves off and escape the torture of not being able to walk like the rest of the creatures in the universe — except for those you already know, the ones that crawl belly-first across the floor and give me panic attacks.

When a louse smiles, it’s only because it has just met another louse even filthier than itself. That’s when it decides to celebrate by digging even deeper into its chosen home. Lice like to reaffirm their identity, so the more social life they have with other lice, the more louse-like they become. If more than 50 lice gather on a single head, that’s considered an illegal settlement, and a pest-control specialist must intervene — if The Hague Tribunal doesn’t take the case first.

Like most animals — including humans — lice in large numbers are even more dangerous, because they threaten the most basic standards of hygiene, good manners, and peaceful coexistence inside the head they’ve occupied. Anyone carrying a legion of vindictive lice also carries the seeds of a greater disease. That’s why it’s always been recommended to root out the most aggressive lice — especially the really nasty ones, the ones that transmit the greatest number of illnesses.

Some trendy hairdressers defend lice, claiming you can’t go against nature. Which only proves that in the 21st century, if you close your eyes and walk down the street, you’re more likely to bump into a fool than into anyone who knows how to spell the word “asshole” correctly. Be careful, by the way, with head-to-head collisions: one in three ends with an unpleasant exchange of lice. And if it’s already bad enough having your own lice in your hair, it’s even more disgusting when someone else’s lice start throwing rooftop parties, inviting the nastiest lice in town, and then pretending not to notice when the rent comes due at the end of the month.

Our own lice, on the other hand, are almost like family. They’ve lived with us for years. We’ve watched them grow. And they even seem open to dialogue, as if one day they might give up their stupid condition and turn into something cleaner and more useful — like, say, a nice cut of Iberian pork. But so far, no louse has ever managed to mutate on its own into pork, which is a shame for the louse, the pig, and above all, for us. If lice ever learned how to stop being lice, they wouldn’t really be lice at all, but something more like a devastating adolescence: horrifying, yes, but thankfully temporary.

As a child, I never had lice. As an adult, it’s happened to me three times. The first time, I discovered what a nit comb was — a kind of hair broom you use to recover the corpses of lice previously drugged with a stinking gel. The last time, I had so many lice that I asked the tax office for a deduction for hosting the homeless, and I seriously considered setting up a foundation for that purpose.

They say teachers are now the ones who spread lice to the adult population the most, simply because their heads are closer to adult height than to children’s. The idea that many teachers pass on lice strikes me as a metaphor far too perfect for postmodern education to be literally true. I’m terribly afraid of lice — but even more afraid of those teachers you and I both know, hiding in the school system like lice, feeding off the most innocent heads. If only there were a comb for this kind of nit.

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