A PLAGUE IN THE SCHOOL
Or Was It?
Talking with my older friend, Bettie, I listened intently as she shared the story of her daughter getting lice at school in the 1970s.
It was so embarrassing, she noted. When her daughter was sent home from school with a note from the school nurse, Bettie ran right over to the neighborhood pharmacy to pick up the medication which was needed to eradicate lice.
She presented her request to the pharmacist and got in line with the other customers to pay. As Bettie likes to do, she began chatting with the others who were in line. Surprise! They were each there for the same reason — to pick up medication to eliminate lice!
She still laughs at the embarrassment they had each felt, trying to hide why they were there.
In telling my son this story, he told me a story of his own:
When my son, always overly self-conscious, was in junior high school, he was deathly afraid of catching lice!!! He thought of it WAY too much. In his mind, getting lice was the red line that could never be crossed. If one got lice, one could never recover from that horrible social embarrassment.
One day in winter, we woke up early to listen to the radio to hear if school had been cancelled due to weather that day. (In those days, that is how we received school closure alerts.)
YES, school was cancelled due to weather! I heard the news while in the kitchen. My son heard the cancellation while in his bedroom with the airwaves filled with static.
I called out in glee, “Isn’t that GREAT? School is CLOSED today!”
He didn’t respond. I went to his room and found him sitting on the edge of his bed looking pale and distraught. I inquired why he was so glum. He shook his head and, “This is horrible!!!”
I asked why it was so horrible….there was no school that day!
He responded, “They cancelled school due to LICE!!!”
I began laughing as I tried to correct him:
“School is cancelled due to ICE, not lice!”
The lice plague stories live on.
