Nitpicking

It's finally happened... by the age of 48 I have at last been initiated into the world of head-lice! 

True, I could well have done without the lovely infestation, the itching, the stinking foams and lotions, and the mountain of washing, but somehow I never quite felt complete as a human being without that experience. Mind you, I don't plan on going out any time soon for a a good case of tuberculosis just for the experience, but nits I can handle...kind of....sort of....except for the ongoing itching and the raging case of paranoia I am now currently experiencing.

Photo from: http://flickr.com/photo/
9082612@N05/4900275659

In a couple of days I am going to my hairdressers and I am dreading the fact the she will probably find a few dead nits in my hair. How do you broach a subject like that with your stylist. "Hi Glynis, what a lovely day. Oh, and by the way, just ignore the nits in my hair, they really are dead. Or at least I'm pretty sure they are, or at least after three chemical doses the beggars had better be dead! But if you see any moving, please let me know."

The weird thing is that I never even knew what nits looked like before this and I was rather disappointed when I finally saw them. Somehow in my minds eye they had taken on the proportion of giant insects doing cartwheels in my hair and creating their own little biosphere in there, complete with a circus. Even now I am scratching cause it feels like one little guy is doing a trapeze act on my scalp, which is one of the after-effects of the paranoia one experiences.

It all started a couple of weeks back when I had a young fellow stay at my place for a few weeks. He was the loveliest little boy but was secretly bombarding our household with a hoard of ninja nits. They snuck onto our shoulders, into our clothes, onto the lounge covers, into our beds and finally into our hair, or at least into mine. 

Nobody else in the household was fortunate enough to get a dose like me. Despite of (or perhaps because of) the incredible amount of oily, waxy type products I have in my tresses, the lice were able to hang on for dear life and begin the whole nit-making process there. Wasn't I fortunate?!

So, I have at last joined an honoured group, that I can literally call the "Nitpickers" because you can usually pick us out in a crowd: we're the ones scratching our scalps like crazy and hoping nobody notices the "Cirque de Nit" troupe we have doing their "thing" in our hair.