It would have been so easy to write about sending son #1 off to Israel and all of the emotional toil it took on my eating habits. It could also have been easy to write about son #2 starting 11th grade, which was my very favorite year of high school despite the SATs, Achievement tests, and all the other things I was supposed to be studying for (emphasis, of course, on the “supposed to”). Or, we could have spoken about son #3 and how he is starting his last year, his 8th-grade year at Yeshivas Noyam, or as I like to call this year “One More Year!” (It’s more like a chant, but you get the point.)
We will not be touching on those topics anymore; I will save those for as the school year progresses. I would like to discuss, as you may or may not have realized from the title, the subject of lice. As a young girl, I never really knew what lice were until third grade. Apparently, a note was sent to the parents, via an actual note, placed in an actual envelope, with an actual stamp on it, mailed from an actual post office. This letter read that there had been many cases of lice found in the school. This letter did not make my mother very happy. Now, there were many letters that my mother received from my school that did not make her very happy, but most of those involved me putting thumbtacks on teachers’ chairs or not doing well on some, or many, tests (third grade is a tough year). But this particular letter put her over the edge. Apparently, my mother, though quite fond of dolls and bows, was not fond of lice.
Every day before going to school, my mother, who was not big on waking up with me in the morning, would braid my hair, clip it on top of my head, and cover it with a white kerchief. You read correctly, I covered my hair in third grade, but do not cover it as a married woman (isn’t that ironic). So not only was I the chubby kid with the big mouth, I became the chubby kid with the big mouth whose mother made her cover her hair. Man, if I only had a therapist, would he have a book to write… Anyway, to make matters worse, when my brother and I would come home from school, he and I would have to take our school clothes off in the garage (all very modestly done) and then we would each have to run upstairs and take a shower, put on new clothes and then (and only then) were we allowed to roam freely through the house. We were once again able to sit on the couches, eat at the kitchen table; we were back to being part of the family. And then the process would start all over the next day until the “epidemic” had been eradicated. Scary stuff.
My mother continued to emphasize the importance of not sharing brushes, head bands, barrettes (even if they were the kind with the pretty ribbons that we used to make in school); that was all lice-spreading behavior and it was very, very bad. Poor Banji, always trying to be the people pleaser just could not follow those simple warnings. It was Camp Ramah 1980-something and I let some girl named Veronica brush my hair. I knew it was wrong. I knew I was giving in to peer pressure, but everyone was doing it!!!! And you can figure out the rest…the hair brushing led to drinking, which led to my first DUI…no, I am just kidding…the hair brushing led to me having nits, which apparently is where the lice come from. My mother wasn’t having any of this. I was not allowed to go home at all; I had to go straight to the pediatrician’s office for an official head check. No hug from mom, no reassurance that it will all be okay…nope, mom was at Bloomingdale’s with my sister (of course) and dad was with me at Dr. Rosen’s office. He was never really sure that I had nits, but my mom was really sure she was going to use this opportunity to get all new bedding and pillows and couch accessories and just burn the old ones in the backyard–why even take a chance? Once my head was declared lice-free, I was allowed back into my mother’s good graces, until the next time I did something to aggravate her, which was probably very soon after that incident. So lice checks were always anxiety provoking for me, and then years later when my boys would have to have them…I wouldn’t even let them stand near a girl with long hair…it was just too much for me to bear.
In the end I was not allowed to go back to camp that summer for fear I would give into temptation again. I never found out what happened to Veronica. Perhaps she is a hair dresser now…
By Banji Latkin Ganchrow
