Creepy news brings back lots of not-so-fond memories

To check for head lice, a parent is supposed to forage through a child's hair, looking for bloodsucking creatures the size of sesame seeds. This would be easier if kids weren't always getting hamburger buns in their hair.

The news is that head lice are tanned, rested and making a comeback. Last week, 150 schoolchildren in Eagan were sent home with a dread diagnosis: Pediculosis. Head lice.

This ishy turn of events carried me back almost 20 years to the day I drove up North to retrieve a 9-year-old from a stay at a friend's cabin. When I showed up, my child was escorted to my car like a convicted felon, his clothes and sleeping bag in a plastic garbage bag that was sealed tight. He had head lice, and so did his best friend. They had suffered simultaneous infestations, and the question of who infested whom was a matter only forensic specialists could solve. But head lice are always someone else's fault. From the looks on the faces I confronted, I knew a decision had been reached: The lice went to the cabin on my kid's hide.

Maybe so. He was on a baseball team that had three helmets for 15 kids, and head lice were passed around like water bottles. Having lice doesn't mean your kid is dirty or you are a bad parent. It just means your kid has friends.

But I remember the shame. I remember the mountains of laundry and the repeated treatments. And the Woody Allen moment when a drugstore clerk went on the loudspeaker to get a price check on the jug of head-lice killer I was trying to purchase discreetly.

I might as well have had an "L" on my forehead: Louser.

So I sympathize with itchy Eaganites wondering how head lice invaded their town. They are probably blaming the big cities to their north -- St. Paul and Minneapolis -- whose jaded residents are inured to lice sightings, and where a little dab of lice bodily fluids on our kids' scalps (it's lice spit that causes the itching) is a cherished part of our rich urban fabric of life.

Up to 12 million school children bring friends home in their hair every year, and it is very tough to weed them out.

(A good place to start a journey to a lice-free life is operated by the National Pediculosis Association at www.headlice.org).

The good news is that lice fighting has made progress since I brought home my kid with his clothes in a garbage bag. Chemical treatments like napalming are out. Gentler treatments are in. Some people even say you can kill lice by putting mayonnaise on a head. Which reminds me of a Howard Stern TV show where Stern was tossing baloney slices at someone. Never mind.

My personal defense strategy is a good one, helped along by male pattern baldness. Head lice can't sneak up on me because I could see them scampering across my scalp like deer trying to cross a meadow on the first Saturday in November.

But I have had to bone up on head lice because, like a soldier who fought in World War I and got called up again for the second round, I am back in the trenches.

Lice. In. His. Classroom.

I think they came from Eagan.

No lice at Coleman home - yet

So far, knock on wood, we haven't gotten lice at our house. But when lice are prowling the halls in your kid's school, your scalp itches and you hear loud parties on the back of your head, near your ears. Tinkling mandibles, maybe.

Each female louse lays up to 150 eggs in its monthlong life span, which involves a lot of goofing off in your hair with guy lice. Do I have to spell it out for you? It's gross.

Besides, lice bring families together. You spend hours cuddling with your kids, combing through their hair, looking at their scalps with magnifying lenses, watching for lice, trying not to throw up. It may be nit-picking, but it's lovely, really. You get to know every bump and hollow on your kid's little noggin.

What else can you do? You can't go anywhere in this condition. Especially not Eagan.