Trio of Guardian Angels Saves the Day

It seems a little pathetic that we haven't managed to put up any stories from our week in Yelapa yet (and we have lots, believe me), but we've spent the days since our return dealing with head colds and work and a dreadful lice infestation that has left your correspondent little time for anything but laundry, nit-picking, and pondering the futility of her pathetic existence.

Poor Simon -- the lice just love him. And with his dark silky hair all grown out long, it takes over an hour to go through it with the nit comb. (For the uninitiated -- and pray you remain that way -- standard operating procedure requires that you do the poison shampoo first, then nit-comb every day for two weeks, with a second dose of the toxic stuff a week after the first.) It's the daily nit-combing bit that really breaks you, especially when you keep finding nits day after day -- didn't I go over this head with a -- well, yes, with a fine-toothed comb -- just yesterday? Where did these nits come from? Are we 45 minutes late for school again? When am I ever going to get to work? (Again, for the uninitiated, you are allowed to go to school during this whole nit-combing phase, because nits don't wander onto other people's heads.)

Well, this morning I finally succumbed to the realization (obvious to everyone else from the beginning) that Simon's long hair was simply too much for me, that I did not have an extra hour and a half every morning to spend on this, and that a buzz cut was really the only thing that would keep me from completely losing what was left of my mind.

It was a terrible moment. Simon is so proud of his long hair, he was actually willing to sit still while I yanked out nits one by one, for as long as it took. I so wished I had it in me to do this for him. But I just didn't. Out came the clippers. I saw his lower lip start to tremble, and I tried to reassure him that he looks really cute with a buzz cut... "I don't want to look cute!" he sobbed. "I want to look like a rock star!" I tried to tell him it would grow again, but he knew it had taken a year taken to get to this point, so it was small comfort.

I waited out several cycles of pleading, bargaining, and tears before Simon finally arrived at a fragile measure of acceptance. I buzzed the back half of his head, but when I got ready to tackle the front, he burst into tears again. "Please, Mama, please! Can you leave the front long? Just a little bit of it? Please, Mama." I knew this was possible, but I also knew it was beyond my kitchen-barber skills.

Which is how I found myself sitting at the Bakery across from a half-buzzed boy with his hood pulled up, eating pastries while we waited for the barber shop to open. Simon, still mourning his rock star hair, whiled away the time designing lice-killing and nit-combing machines:

(Note: these nits are being dumped into a bucket of poison, zapped with a bolt of electricity, burned in a barrel, and then buried in a pit, while the boy sits blithely solving a Rubik's cube. Art therapy, anyone?)

Suddenly the first of our guardian angels walked into the Bakery. Simon and I took one look at his leather jacket and his slightly grown out mohawk, which barely covered the tattoos on his scalp, and realized two things. First of all, this guy had "rock star" written all over him. Second, it would take about ten seconds to nit-comb him. A glimmer of hope began to dawn in Simon's eyes.

As we were heading out the door to the barber shop, our second angel appeared: Edna Sarah. This delightful lady was Simon's teacher when he was two, but before that her long & storied past included singing in Detroit night clubs, driving across the country in a bus full of hippies with colorful waving people painted all over it, and hanging around with Jimi Hendrix in New Orleans. By the time she got done telling Simon how cool his new haircut would be, he was genuinely smiling.

Our third angel was Pam Smith at Columbia City Cuts, who swiftly and cheerfully transformed our hatchet-job home haircut into something A Flock of Seagulls would be proud of.

We're still considering the mohawk option, but for now we are delighted to have the nit-combing down to a perfectly reasonable 15 minutes. (I know it's tough, but if you can remember not to tell him he looks cute, we'd all be grateful.)

Yelapa stories coming soon!