I thought back to my elementary school days in Los Angeles, and could remember only one time when I heard about lice: third grade, Robert Fernandez. I remember this because he was the only kid I ever knew who had lice.
"Did you have lice in Japan, when you were growing up?" I asked my mother. She answered in Japanese: "Oh, sure, during the war -- everybody had lice, kids and adults. But that was wartime! When the airplanes would come, we had to rush to hide in holes in the ground, covered by futon, all cowering together. You couldn't avoid it. Every night when we bathed, my mother would rinse our hair with vinegar, and comb cooking oil through our hair afterward. With four girls, this was a job all by itself.
"But I don't remember having lice problems after the war was over -- when the occupation soldiers came, they sprayed us all with DDT. They just lined us up and sprayed us, adults, kids, everybody. It looked like people had stuck their heads in a bag of flour -- our heads were completely covered with this white powder. Can you believe it? Makes me shudder to think about it now. We didn't know that DDT was harmful then. Besides, it's not like we could refuse to get sprayed ... but we didn't have lice after that!"
Okay, well that puts things into perspective. We'll do what we can to try to stay out of the lice cycle at our school, but if we do get any little lice companions coming home with my kids, we'll deal with it -- and be glad that we have never had to grow accustomed to the sound of bomber planes overhead.
Can't get DDT? American Academy of Pediatrics gives a thumbs up to malathion.
"Did you have lice in Japan, when you were growing up?" I asked my mother. She answered in Japanese: "Oh, sure, during the war -- everybody had lice, kids and adults. But that was wartime! When the airplanes would come, we had to rush to hide in holes in the ground, covered by futon, all cowering together. You couldn't avoid it. Every night when we bathed, my mother would rinse our hair with vinegar, and comb cooking oil through our hair afterward. With four girls, this was a job all by itself.
"But I don't remember having lice problems after the war was over -- when the occupation soldiers came, they sprayed us all with DDT. They just lined us up and sprayed us, adults, kids, everybody. It looked like people had stuck their heads in a bag of flour -- our heads were completely covered with this white powder. Can you believe it? Makes me shudder to think about it now. We didn't know that DDT was harmful then. Besides, it's not like we could refuse to get sprayed ... but we didn't have lice after that!"
Okay, well that puts things into perspective. We'll do what we can to try to stay out of the lice cycle at our school, but if we do get any little lice companions coming home with my kids, we'll deal with it -- and be glad that we have never had to grow accustomed to the sound of bomber planes overhead.
Can't get DDT? American Academy of Pediatrics gives a thumbs up to malathion.
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