Saturday, April 13, 2013

L is for Louse

Back in my day, one of the worst things to call someone on the playground was a louse. To kids, there is a stigma attached to having lice. A stigma, that to this day has not been broken. Dirty kids, poor kids, kids that were different always had a better chance of being infested than you did.

Until the day, you actually came home, digging and scratching in your hair and suddenly, you were ashamed.

I've had lice twice in my life. Once as a child and I don't really remember much about it except I insisted on looking at one through a magnifying glass. And once a few years ago when the girls and I bought some beach hats. Ashleigh noticed them first on her head and I asked her if there was a notice from her school - because the schools will do that - and sure enough, there wasn't. We racked our brains trying to figure out where she could have picked them up, when Cyra came to me complaining that her head was itchy. 

We traced the outbreak to the hats and by then, I was starting to itch.

Everyone and everything got treated: all the stuffed animals, bedding, clothes. I put chemicals on the carpet, sprayed so much Rid everywhere, I might as well have called pest control.

Just writing about it makes my head itch!!

Louse has been around for ages as the singular name for lice. As a slang though, it can be traced to the early 1900s where it was a noun used to describe a mean person. Today, I think we use it to mean a jerk or a low-life.

Example: Larry lurked low in the lilacs lying in wait for Lenny the Louse to leave Leona's love nest. Larry laughed thinking about how he was going to lob a loogie at Lenny.

This post has been brought to you by the Letter L and the fine folks at Blogging A to Z. And by the number 744. Check out more A to Z blogs here!

18 comments:

  1. I was scratching my head too as I was reading.

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    1. Yeah. I needed to take a shower after posting!

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  2. Eeek! Itchy! I worked in a preschool and saw how quickly those fiends spread and with no discretion! Stopping by from a-z

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    1. Oh I know! They spread like crazy all it takes is one kids and then the whole class is infected!

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  3. You know, I never made the connection before! Probably because we call the nits in Australia.

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    1. Interestingly enough, the term "nit-picking" also comes from lice - well, dealing with them and all.

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  4. A related term that has also evolved somewhat from its original meaning is "lousy." This adjective literally means infested with lice, but can also describe anything that occurs in large number or dense distribution, e.g., "I don't want to eat at Luigi's; that place is lousy with lawyers." Now, of course, it is most often used to mean crummy, shoddy, of poor quality, etc.

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    1. I hadn't made that connection. I kind of feel ashamed now, like I've lost my English street cred.

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  5. Oh man!! My girls had lice once. It was the worst thing ever trying to get rid of them. Then I caught them and shit got real.

    I still have flashbacks to those dark times!!

    Hugs!

    Valerie

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    1. It's hard when we have them as adults because who's going to nit-pick our hair for hours and hours??

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  6. Luckily I've never had lice (knock on wood). I totally didn't realize that louse was the singular of lice.

    KC @ The Occasional Adventures of a Hermit & Oh Frog It

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  7. Aw, man, you've got me scratching my head now, too! I've never had lice, and I think I would be so upset if I got it. Not cause I think it's dirty or anything...it's just the thought of bugs crawling around on my head is horrifying! Ugh.

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    1. I'm with you. There isn't anything inherently "dirty" about having lice. There's the stigma of course, but mostly I get the heebie-jeebies because I don't want things crawling on me!

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  8. Kids can be cruel. This reminds me of one of my favorite episodes of South Park about this same thing.
    Shawn at Laughing at Life 2

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    1. Yes they can be. When I taught 8th grade we had a case in wing and the student never stopped getting teased about it.

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  9. I've had lice twice- awful experience! To this day the smell of mayo and olive oil still haunt me- I had lice 5 years ago! New follower.

    my blog: morgankatz505.blogspot.com

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    1. Ewww. I would hate to have mayo sitting on my head. That sounds...cold and clumpy!

      Thanks for stopping by and sticking around!

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