I may never be right again.

The secretary brought a girl to my office saying her teacher said she had been itching her head. The girl mumbled something that sounded like "I don't like socks." I thought it was odd because I could see her wearing a pair, so I asked her to repeat, and she shouted in my face, "I DON'T LIKE BUGS." Okay... I took one peek in her hair: eggs everywhere, and worse, LIVE bugs everywhere. I thought I was going to lose my breakfast, and I'm sure I'll be having nightmares about it tonight. Of course the girl, a kindergartner, didn't  know her name so it took some sleuthing to track down her emergency card. Once that was out, we discovered her home number and parent cell phone numbers on the card were all disconnected. I went down the list of Grandmoms and finally reached one who said she would pass along the message to the parents.

Meanwhile, I was trapped with a kindergartener who could talk anyone's ear off yet didn't know her first name. I called her sister down for a lice check, and she was equally loaded with bugs, but even only a year older knew to not scratch her head in public. Now I was stuck with two lice-loaded girls in my small office, one of whom wanted to take off her coat and fling it around. She kept picking bugs out of her head and would shriek with delight, "I found a bug!" and bring the treasure to show me. It was like playing keep away trying to keep myself at a reasonable distance from the lice potentially flying off the coat swinging around and the girl's arm when she was shoving the bugs in my face. When I got strict and told them to sit still, the looks on their faces told me they've never been disciplined before.

Best was when I asked the two of them if they had told their mom they had bugs in their hair. There was just no mistaking the extent of the problem, even from a distance, and I was wondering how a parent could miss such a thing. I understood when the older girl answered: "My mommy told us not to tell anyone so we could come to school."