CSotD: Lice Lice Baby
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One of the odder synchronicities I've come across.
From the top: The parents in Edge City were scheduled to fly off on vacation, but got a call to pick up their son from camp because he has head lice. Maybe he got them from Hammy in Baby Blues. And Agnes can't afford to go to summer camp but will get information on the topic, and possibly the topic themselves, at a Fourth of July gathering in the park.
We didn't have head lice when I was a kid. I think they're an invasive species. Or maybe they're repelled by gluten, because we all ate gluten back then and thought nothing of it, and none of us had head lice.
Maybe they breed in warm, dark places like bicycle helmets.
In any case, we didn't have head lice when I was a kid.
And when I say "we didn't have head lice when I was a kid," I don't mean they weren't around, because they were. We just didn't have them, or, if we did, we just dealt with it and moved on.
(I was going to simply add a link here to the CDC's FAQ on the topic, but feel compelled to point out that the first question is about whether you should coat your head with mayonnaise. Remember that tomorrow when you're celebrating America's greatness.)
The center of our town was a general store at the crossroads, and it was where we hung out as young teens, to the profit but despair of the store manager, Howard Clark.
Howard was convinced we drove away his customers, though his customers were, for the most part, our parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins, or at least our neighbors, and, while they might have wanted to avoid us, I'm sure they didn't find us particularly threatening.
In fact, we found them a little threatening and would duck our cigarettes down as they drove by, since they'd be certain to let our parents know what we were up to.
Today there are places that make big profits by pretending to be old-fashioned general stores with all sorts of old timey-products, but Tears Store was the real deal and, while it was stocked with groceries, it also featured everything else in the world, from woolen hunter's pants to bug dope to tea kettles to trusses, including a lot of
vintage things like spruce gum and pine tar soap and remedies for things we found rather comical.
Including head lice. I think it was "Nix," but we found it comical, whatever it was.
Now, I'm sure somebody among our crowd had experienced head lice and I'm equally sure they weren't going to pipe up in the middle of Tear's Store and say, "Oh,we use that!" about any of the things we were examining and laughing over.
But I'm equally sure the school wasn't going to declare a state of emergency because of it, and I can promise you that Camp Lord O' The Flies was barely willing to inform parents of broken bones for fear they'd take little Johnny home and ask for a refund. They sure weren't going to demand the kid leave over a case of bugs.
However, upon further review, it appears that lice have evolved and become a scourge, a factor which is probably accentuated by the reverse-evolution of parents, whose keen ability to fret and whine has become increasingly powerful through constant exercise.
Both of these developments, I'm convinced, are due to vaccinations and living near power lines.
And on a related degradation:
It's hard to breathe new life into a topic cartoonists have been battering around for the past few years, but this Matt Wuerker panel is absolutely brilliant: One of the great depictions of group interaction in a natural-but-urban park, updated.
And en pointe (heh), because I heard a story on All Things Considered yesterday about kids being forcibly unplugged at summer camp.
The story kind of went off the rails, because the reporter apparently finds it inconsistent that, while the camp forbids Gameboys, cell phones, MP3 players and the like, it uses a computer for its accounting and has a high-tech system to help prevent drownings.
This is like puzzling over the fact that kids aren't allowed to use calculators on a math test, and yet the administration uses a computer to track their grades.
The entire summer camp movement was based on getting increasingly urbanized kids in touch with the natural world, and you can't possibly accomplish that if they aren't unplugged. Yes, it's part of their lifestyle. But we gave up TV at Camp Lord O' The Flies, and we were also forbidden to get "CARE packages" of cookies and candy from home.
For all the faults of the place, it was an eight-week respite from our "lifestyles" and we benefited from it.
Hey! D'you suppose head lice breed in ear buds?
Anyway, I'll bet the little buggers haven't developed an immunity to this stuff:
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