I really am not a squeamish person. There was a time I would go bananas about cleaning dog poo off the kids shoes when they walked in it or a pooch poo’d in the garden, but since starting care work there isn’t one bodily excrement that I have not dealt with so I am pretty much okay with everything.
Insects don’t hassle me much either. I dont mind spiders or any of that. In fact my ex used to get me out of bed to get rid of spiders in the bathroom. Since moving here I have to say that I have made more spiders homeless weekly, in the house, than I did in my whole life in Dublin. They just seem to be that type of house.
But one breed of insects is really starting to get on my tits.
In the past year, there has been what I can only call an epidemic of head lice rampaging through the primary school Ronan attends and its getting to the stage that I wonder are the buggers morphing and evolving into a type of super nit that eventually we wont be able to kill. It certainly seems that way.
Back in the day we had Clinic Shampoo and the fine comb. Every saturday evening our heads were inspected by the Ma, and the comb used if required. There was one lotion called Prioderm, which was also used if anyone got scabies, which was unheard of normally. Prioderm smelt, and felt, like you were pouring a mixture of crude oil and petrol on your head, it stank and took at least a month to get the residue out of your hair. And EVERYONE knew what had happened and the shame of it was shocking. But your parents didnt give a shit and sent you to school and there was none of this informing the school either, if a parent didnt check and catch them then that was their look out.
You would be told “dont sit beside such and such, I saw them in mass on sunday scratching so their head is walking” or “dont share your beret or scarf with so and so, their mother is in the pub all day and doesnt give a shite”
I remember me and Alan in primary school were having photos done, and my mother washed and brushed my hair, and all was well till the photos came home and she realised that Mrs Kelly had just combed my fringe with probably her own comb, but Jesus she nearly murdered me for using someone elses comb.
I have never used a sunbed in my life and this is one of the reasons, we were told that nits could survive (and crabs) on a sunbed for 3 days. I would rather be pale and anaemic thanks.
Up until the age of 43 I got nits ONCE. And that was from slowdancing with a couple of fellas in McGonagles and my mother nearly battered me for it. She insisted my hair was to be cut short (it wasnt) and it took me three weeks to get rid of them and a whole lot of sitting with a newspaper at my feet, and a black bag poncho, until the little feckers were gone, Ma standing behind me, combing and combing, wondering what sort of dirty fuckers I was associating with. I suppose she didnt get the whole long haired bloke thing.
That till now was my whole experience of the nit issue till last year.
This time last year, I came in off a night shift in the Mater, having been sent the text and saw the youngest pulling at the hair over his ear. I took a look and sure enough he had them. To me, they looked like little brown earwigs. I got the lotion and the comb and went for it, and made sure they were all gone. The eldest was also pulled in for the inspection and he had some as well, however they were only tiny, barely hatching. I spent hours on his head, his hair is to the waist and thick as a rope. Got the boys sorted and thought that was that.
Not so, a week….A WEEK later the buggers were back, and this time were a different species of critter. Looking for all the world like fruit flies, there was dozens of them. In my head included. Cue two days, combing, looking, combing and looking, stripping beds, boilwashing towels and linens, washing coats, hats, hoodies, sterilising brushes and combs, and tripping the switch for the mammy radar that means you can tell when someone is even thinking of scratching their head, ten minutes before they do it.
And now they are back. A newer species, tiny black things, eggs a dung grey. Got the text last week from the school and groaned, because I just bloody knew…here we go again.
My house as a rule is bedhop central and the youngest could end up in any bed in the night and to be frank thats how he has been able to share his largesse with me and his brother. And its awful. Every feckin day for the past ten months I am paranoid, checking and checking and re checking them, because the species of nit thats around now seems to wag its arse at the (expensive) nit lotions and comes back new and improved every time.
And its not that I am dirty, far from it. My bathroom is coming down with every type of tea tree shampoo and conditioner you can name. Eldest washes his hair every day and is scrupulous about keeping it clean, and it bugs the crap out of him that these unwanted residents seem to like him so much, and wont get the fuck away.
So what are we to do? Apart from the obvious comb, look, treat, comb, look then repeat as nauseum? Are they immune to what is out there to kill them? I have used three full bottles of tea tree, nitty gritty spray, full marks solution, and the old one, mayonnaise. And still they come back, like a bad smell lingering, and a recurring nightmare. I have boiled every bit of bedlinen till its like paper tissue, my OCD is in overdrive because NOTHING on my bed matches at the moment. I hate that. Every towel in the house is falling apart from 90 degree washes, the smell of milton off the hair brushes is like a hospital sluice room. And still I look, comb, look again, comb, spray, comb, scrub twice in tea tree shampoo, look again….. its relentless.
Its poor consolation that they only go for clean heads. Because the fact that they are there is called a “dirty head” and you feel scruffy. There,s another myth that they dont like dyed hair, let me tell you that my head is dyed off me for the past 30 years and still the little bastards take up residence. I thought at first that someone in the school is not treating their child’s head and that was what the problem was, but I see now its not, having treated us all three times in a week and still the buggers cling on, its just that they have gone past being killed by the bog standard lotions and are not put off by the smell of tea tree and sail by the repellent spray like a bunch of Mexican bandits on route to Rock Ridge, sniggering as they go.
“Badges? we don’ need no stinkin’ badges”
The fancy combs are not worth a curse, I spent 18 euro on a metal nitty gritty comb and more shite gets stuck in it than it removes. You know its a losing battle when a nail brush and scalding water wont dislodge the bits in the middle and you resort to dental floss to clean between the prongs! I am going to get the old ivory comb (its plastic, not elephant any more!!!!) and go with that. Its just the whole palaver is so bloody time consuming, and soul destroying when you think that yeah you managed to get every microscopic little egg off the scalp but in three days time or less you are going to be doing it all….over..a fucking…gain….
I dont think I am going to bother me arse with the fancy and expensive lotions any more. I think at this stage they are immune and it wont matter any more. I think I have to go back to the old ways, shampoo that has by products of agri diesel in it, and smells accordingly, and a weekly or bi-weekly combing session whether its needed or not. Because what we have been doing up to now isn’t working and something has to give. My mother managed to keep our heads clean for all of our childhood and teens, you cannot imagine what it feels like to know that I am failing in something so simple and straightforward.
There are so many bloody rules, albeit unwritten about being a parent. Its come to the point that I think someone like me should go into the fourth years and warn them that no matter what they think they know, as soon as that little bundle of joy is placed into their arms, all common sense goes out the windows. I cannot count the amount of times I have read articles on line about bog standard things kids do that parents thought were normal but that ended up being something sinister and life threatening. Back in our day your ma would give you the once over going out the door to school and if you were dressed and clean and had eaten something approximating a breakfast, and had a sandwich in the bag for lunch then she was off the hook. If you arrived home in one piece, fully, or nearly fully dressed (my sister was always, without fail, minus hair clips and ribbons) with all your limbs and not bleeding, she would nod with satisfaction and get on with the dinner.
Now its LUNCHBOX policing, and political correctness gone ape shit. Imagine if someone told our parents that we couldn’t have a certain item in our lunchbox? Imagine the uproar? Designated school shoes? Eh, sorry, when you pay for them teacher you can tell me what colour to buy. End of.
I mean when there are charts online, describing the colour a child’s shite should be at various stages up to age 7, there is something badly wrong. Helicopter parenting? All some of them are short of is shitting for the child to save them doing it themselves. But its because of this hovering, protectiveness that things are so bloody wrong.
In my day the nit nurse was a fixture in the schools with her metal comb and her dettol, and by god you got sent home quick smart if you had nits. But that would psychologically damage the children today,they say. Makes me wonder if “they” ever stood for four hours in the kitchen with a feckin flashlight combing and combing and combing, cursing as you hand over a days bloody wages for more insecticide that wont work for more than a week.
Houses were fumigated by the corpo on a regular basis and the family would be the talk of the place, but in fairness the houses in question were those that were beyond redemption and should have been levelled through no fault of the housewife. But still, the mud clung. I dont say that this was a good thing or a better way to be, but it seemed we had other ways of dealing with the nit problem that didnt tippy toe round the sensitivities of parents who might get insulted with cold hard fact.
Nits are unfortunately a fact of life thats becoming more and more prevalent and more and more, for want of a better word, viral now. Its close packed classrooms and kids sharing hats and halloween masks and huddling together to play nintendos. Burying your itchy head in the sand and hoping they go away isnt going to cut the mustard.
Its time to get the boys up for school, the eldest is hitting snooze on his alarm the last ten minutes so its time to get a brew on. And check, and check and check. Here’s to hope springing eternal, and no more nits springing anywhere!
mysadoldlife 