Look, I know I don't have Aids.
I can’t possibly have Aids, because this year I’ve had more Aids tests than I’ve even been out to a nightclub.
I can’t possibly have Aids, because this year I’ve had more Aids tests than I’ve even been out to a nightclub.
So I don’t
have any HIV antibodies present in my blood, and thus I also have an insurance
policy, a flat and a medical aid.
But I have
been socially stigmatised because of my condition by an uncaring, ill-informed
public, when I could have been a productive member of society.
It was
lice, and it was in Standard 3 or so.
There was
one teacher who apparently had the gift of being a lice-diviner; and she was
installed in the hall to inspect the entire seven grades. English and Afrikaans
and both special classes.
If ever a
gift can turn out to be a burden, that teacher must have felt that this was
such an occasion.
I remember
feeling some empathy for her, as I dutifully queued up for my turn and watched
her shriveling up her nose in stoic disgust as she plunged her fingers into the
hair of smelly Gregory, the boy who collected moles.
She
rummaged around for a while, intently picking through his thatch like someone who
doesn’t eat olives going through their Greek salad, before eventually
pronouncing him lice- and nit-free.
That
Gregory passed – in fact the only thing I remember him passing – gave me
confidence. When all three of the Kimbreys, who kept monkeys, managed to earn
the teacher’s grudging approval, I thought I was home free. But no. I was among
only three boys in the entire school with lice.
If girls
get lice, I’ve yet to see it.
“But I’m
from a good family,” I protested tearfully. “And I never play with the cat.”
It was to
no avail
“Lice is no
respecter of social status,” the teacher told me gravely. “No one is immune.”
I think it
was probably the time we crawled from Alsace Road to Bordeaux Avenue via the
stormwater drains that gave us lice. Or the time we built the underground fort
in the bush at the bottom of the road.
Either way,
there were three of us who were eventually left standing like lice pariahs at
the side of the hall by the time the inspection was over.
We were
sent home that very afternoon with a letter excusing us from school for the
next week and outlining the course of treatment that our parents should follow
to allow us to be readmitted.
This
included a powerful alcohol-based spray-on treatment that apparently worked by exfoliating
all the skin on your scalp and causing patch baldness.
But before
that, once the shame had faded, our little group of outcasts undertook a small
cranial inspection of our own. Nitpicking, I think it’s called.
From what
we could tell, lice were tiny black dots, while nits were the little white
ones. It wasn’t the end of the world, we decided, we still had our self-respect
and even if we were temporarily cast out into the wilderness, at least we still
had each other.
As luck
would have it, we all played tennis.
So, for the
next week we contested what came to be known as the Lice Bowl, a marathon
series of American singles challenges, where two played one, in each possible
permutation.
The Lice
Bowl was contested on the school tennis courts during school hours, when all
the other kids were in class and there was no chance of us infecting the
populace. It was a masterstroke, and I recommend it to all recovering lice
sufferers.
The only
complaint came from the art teacher who had the classroom by the tennis courts.
“You can’t
play tennis during school hours,” she bellowed.
Now
comfortable in our role as outcasts, we bellowed back in a remarkable show of
gall, “Get away from us! We’ve got lice!”
She did
actually recoil a bit, and went to find the headmaster, who confirmed that,
yes, those were indeed the lice boys.
By the end
of the week we were putting salt and pepper in our hair, to approximate the
appearance of parasites, and got the Monday and Tuesday off as well.
The next
year, all three of us made the first tennis team.
