Nits

At work, when there are just a few grammatical or formatting errors in a document someone else has circulated for comment and review, it is common in my industry to say, “I have just a few nits for you.” What the person speaking usually means is, “I don’t want to embarrass you or take up meeting time with everyone here to point out small errors (some of which may be points of preference), but I will send them to you so you can look at the changes I suggested and incorporate them into the document.”

They do NOT mean that they have a few lice eggs to pass you.

Since I was recently the victim of a lice outbreak (yes, I felt victimized), I can promise you, I will never use the phrase, “I have just a few bits for you,” at work, and I will have to work hard to suppress a shudder anytime I am in an in-person meeting (I’ll feel free to shiver if I’m on a conference call) and someone utters those words.

I will also never think of the phrase “nit-pick” the same anymore, either.

As I was spending two hours (yes, that’s right) being professionally de-loused,, I learned a few things about lice. For those of you uninterested, skip this paragraph. But I think you will find it enlightening.  They have six legs. Their eggs are called nits. They do not burrow, unlike bedbugs. They do not jump, unlike fleas. They are the second-most contagious thing in the US after the common cold. They can hold their breath for up to 8 hours, so merely washing everything will not be sufficient. Or you can freeze things like your hairbrush in a bag overnight...that will kill them. They WILL die if you get them hot enough, so scorching everything in the dryer will work. They reproduce in less than a week. Their bites only itch if you are allergic to them, so you might not know if you have them if you’re not allergic. They live mostly by the ears and at the crown of a person’s head. They are mostly transferred by people between 9-12 yrs of age, judging by the demographics the de-louser mentioned. They can travel eight inches per minute. They change from grey to rust colored when they’re full. It does not matter if your personal hygiene is perfect or you are a complete hygienic slob—lice are equal opportunists. They like O+ and A+ best; they will probably try to move to another person if you don’t have one of those two blood types. Lice cannot survive away from a head for more than 2-3 days. Nits can be confused with dandruff. And the grossest part is that if you have enough of them (yay for this not happening to me!) your hair can literally move with them as they crawl, so it looks like there is a fan on your head or special effects in your hair.

There’s something to be said for social grooming. Checking for lice is never a bad idea. I had never had them before and it was awful. I was emotionally traumatized. Thinking you have lice and knowing you have them are totally different things. I threw a fit and became an emotional crazy person when I found out. I was horrified. I felt unclean. There was nothing I could do. Why me? I didn’t deserve lice! That only happens to dirty people! Incidentally, N brought them to us and eventually HH got them, too. L was spared the indignity. He would have had to have been shaved bald—there’s no way he would have tolerated the treatment.

I hope none of you ever has occasion to be nit-picked. Every time my head itches, I’m still worried that she missed some and I will have to go through the trauma again. (No, I did not scorch my head with chemicals—I had the lice suffocated with silicon oil. I hear mayo and peanut butter work, too, but my hair has fully recovered and I am so happy about it.)