Battle of the bugs!

By Jack Elliott
Correspondent

When I was a kid (a long time ago) generally the first sign there were cooties in the school was a boy showing up in class wearing a toque he refused to remove even during class. You just new he’d had cooties and the old man had grabbed him, stuffed him down in a barrel, and got up close and personal with a pair of hair clippers. That they might have been the cow clippers mattered not a whit. As a matter of fact many a dairy farmer’s son never got to waste money on a real barber as long as there was a pair of cow clippers and a bowl handy- at least until they started working away from home. But that’s another story- just ask Pickle. Back to the cooties.
By the end of the week, the school nurse had determined pretty well every kid in the class, if not the whole school had at least a trace of the creepy crawlies and we were warned that an inspection on Monday morning better find things all cleaned up or you were sent home.
The assortment of home remedies that were trotted out Saturday morning was simply amazing. Some were probably so toxic, that not only did they wipe out the cooties, they probably dewormed us, cured any traces of ring worm, made us candidates for late onset tumours and may have even scrambled our DNA. I can see everyone at the debating table in the Bakery in Drizzle Creek glancing at each other and wondering if that is what happened to their neighbour.
The personal remedy at our house was kerosene, simply because it was at hand. The clippers were out as there were six girls and only two boys. In fact one sister carried mental scars for years suffered from home administered haircuts. She was quite an athlete and was to have her picture taken for the local newspaper. An older sister offered to trim up her locks and she agreed only on the condition that the hair be kept long enough to hide her generous ears. The home hairdresser agreed and carefully held the hair, trimming just below the ear, but when she released the locks, the natural curl retracted the hair well up to the top of the ear. The victim was mortified and refused any further barbering. To this day we have that news photo of the star athlete in the family album, one ear prominently displayed the other hidden under a shaggy mop. Back to the cooties.
Everyone’s hair was well rubbed with kerosene and a rag tied over the head for about 20 minutes to fumigate the little buggers. Then it was quickly washed out as blisters had started to rise on the scalps of the more sensitive members of the tribe. But it worked, and it must have been a pretty standard treatment as on Monday morning the whole classroom smelled like they had been involved in an accident with a diesel tanker truck. There were a handful of new buzz cuts and the school was declared ‘clean’, generally until the next winter when we got back around to swapping hats and combs.
A recent trip to the gene pool shows how much things have changed. Today things are more politically correct. No more cooties, now it’s head lice and it is spoken of softly and quietly. No one is ostracized, no one is forced to take the cure, and in fact no one ever seems to be checked or checking. So there seems to be a persistent plague as the little critters happily migrate from head to head infesting in perpetuity. No more harsh poisonous treatments, just friendly, fresh smelling herbal shampoos and hour long sessions, twice a day, running cootie (sorry about that politically insensitive word) combs through those long locks. After a week or so the gene pool is declared ‘clean’. Any takers on how long it will last?
I’m folliclely challenged so I don’t think any self respecting cootie would bother with me, but I wonder why the Pearl is scratching her head.