Saturday, February 26, 2005

846 Praying about head lice

We all started feeling itchy as she was telling us about the head lice infestation in her classroom and measures they were taking to prevent the spread. Head lice are (is?) a serious problem for elementary school children. The scientific name for head louse is Pediculus humanus capitis. Sort of rhymes with ridiculous. Another name for infestation with head lice is pediculosis. Description here.

The measures were common sense--the children kept their coats on the back of their chairs, rather than in the coat room sharing space, and were told to keep their hair up off their shoulders. Wouldn't you know, the parent of the child who was the source of most of the infections, objected to the teacher telling his child how to wear her hair, so the word came down from the office, "No rules on hair styles." Schools are very fearful of law suits, so even practical measures that apply to all children and don't single any one out may not be workable.

There is one school in Columbus that has no head lice. It has a special group of prayer warriors who pray about that, and for over a year, no child in the school has had head lice. So we decided we'd be an ad hoc prayer group for that school, and specifically that class room. I suppose we could have included the whole school system, but we're going after this one louse at a time.

I don't know to whom you would send this card genre, but there are e-cards for the occasion that calls for mail to nit wits.

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