Lice and Banishment!

Lice, the bane of my little girl existence.

Every few months, my elementary school conducted a lice check. The teachers each had their hour to bring the students to the nurse's office. We had a nice nurse's office. It was big and could fit a whole classroom into it.

We all waited by the door while two or three nurses took a student and checked their hair with long sticks. 

"Clean, clean, clean."

And then it was my turn. Everybody watched as the nurse, in a loud, nasal voice announced to the universe, "This one has lice."

All the little rats who'd been passed as clean gasped and whispered to one another until the info reached the whole school that Julia had lice. Had the nurse no sense of propriety? Why didn't she howl out who the clean ones were, too? She put me in a corner where all the dirty kids went to think about their life.

"Julia has to go home."

Me and the nurses were on a first name basis since I showed up in the nurse's office every day for some kind of bruise, bump, or scrape. Sometimes, I just came to get an ice pack since the Mesa sun was a steady two million point three degrees. They didn't give ice packs freely. You had to be hurt first. They gave me ice packs, though. As soon as I had lice, just like that, I was banished and nobody wanted to be friends anymore.

There I sat, in a hard metal chair, hoping somebody else had lice so we could be ashamed together. Nobody else had lice, not even that kid who drooled ranch all over himself at lunchtime. They gazed at me as if I had a pentagram written on my forehead. The little devil worshipers played Bloody Mary on a regular basis, but they didn't have lice.

Before all was finished, the teacher told me to go back to the classroom and gather my things up because I was going home early in shame. The door was crowded with my fair-weathered friends, but I headed straight for them and they parted like water. I made my slow way to the classroom on the other side of the school.

The school was in a bad neighborhood and we had real lock-downs every once in a while, but no weirdo wanted to kidnap a little girl full of lice. So I made it to the classroom unharmed.

While I was getting my things, I was gearing up for the lonely walk home. It was the most exciting part of my banishment, but then my mom was there out of nowhere and took me home. I guess they had called her and told her of my banishment for the sixth time that year.

For a week, she pulled bugs and eggs out of my bushy locks. When I got back, everybody was friends again and they welcomed me back. They were glad I was well. And then the teacher dropped a stack of work in front of me and said, "This is all the stuff you missed."

I had to rethink my life.