Can You Kill Cooties in a Microwave?

When I was in school, I sometimes heard about "cooties," but I can't say I ever actually knew anyone who had them. My mother would tell me about incidents involving kids she went to school with who had them. It always made me shudder to think about it. I thought people had to be dirty to have head lice.

When my kids were in school, they often brought home a note saying that a child in their class had head lice and I should check their heads. I always found that unnerving because I had no idea what I was looking for. As far as I know, neither of them ever had head lice.

A few years ago we were camping with my daughter, her husband, their four-year-old, Cami, and his 12-year-old daughter, Jessica. Jessica had gone swimming in the lake, and then had showered and shampooed her hair at the bath house. Later she complained of her head itching. Her dad teased her about cooties. My daughter said it was probably just dry scalp. I took her into our trailer and massaged vinegar into her scalp, then shampooed, conditioned, and dried her beautiful thick, curly hair. She said it felt much better, and nothing more was said about it.

The next weekend, my daughter, her husband, and Cami came to our house for a visit. As soon as they left, I laundered their sheets and put them back on the beds. We were planning to take a trip, so I got busy packing. A couple of days later my daughter called and said she had received a call at work from Cami's day care. Cami had head lice. My daughter was horrified, left work without revealing the reason, picked up some lice killer shampoo, then rushed home to work on Cami, who had already been retrieved from day care by one of her older sisters.

I could imagine her concern. To say my daughter's house and everything in it is clean would be a gross understatement. She was born neat to a fault. Apparently her husband was as well. He will pick tiny pieces of lint off a wood floor. Crumbs are caught in mid-air. One could perform surgery on any surface in the house and not risk infection. The thought of head lice must have been to them absolutely horrifying.

I asked my daughter if she thought perhaps Jessica had had head lice after all, and since Cami had slept in the same bed with Jessica when they were camping, she might have caught them from her. Jessica lives with her mother, so she was notified. She insisted that Jessica was not the source of the head lice.

My daughter, remembering that Cami's teacher had French-braided her hair, decided she must have used a brush or comb on her that had been used on an infected child. She made plans to send Cami's own comb and brush in her backpack in the future.

The weekend before, when they were visiting us,Cami had confided to me that she had gone to her parent's bed when she got up the next morning,"to cuddle with Mommy." So although I had already laundered the sheets from both beds,I stripped them again and washed them in the hottest water available. Comforters and pillows were sealed in plastic to stay for a week or more, per my daughter's instructions.

I continued preparations for our trip,and we left the next weekend. After we were several hundred miles down the road,my daughter called on the cell phone and said she regretted it deeply, but she had an update on the head lice issue. Seems Jessica had them after all. I have been told that Jessica's mother is also very strict about cleanliness. But Jessica had spent the night with a friend who, as it turned out, had head lice. Jessica's mother spent two hours combing through her thick mane with a fine-toothed comb after treating her with lice killer shampoo.

My head immediately starting itching and my mind racing. Had I sterilized my brush and comb after using them on Jessica that day in the trailer? Was I infected even now? And worse yet, had they spread to my husband?

I asked him to stop at a Wal-Mart in the next town, where I purchased lice killer shampoo. Two bottles, in fact. It was so embarrassing. I could see the checker staring at my head as I paid for my purchase and fled from the store. At least she didn't know me.

That night in a motel I rushed to shampoo my hair with the shampoo I had bought, then insisted that my husband do so as well. I also washed (with the special shampoo) our shirts and anything else I thought might be infected with lice. I had wet clothing hanging all over the room.

Then I discovered I had failed to pack an extra nightgown for myself. The night before, I had worn the only one I had packed. Now I needed to wash it. At my age, sleeping in a tee-shirt is not an option. I wanted my own nightgown. But if I washed it, it would not be dry by bedtime. My husband offered to drive me back down the road to buy another one at a Wal-Mart we had passed. I told him I bought my gowns at J.C. Penney's so Wal-Mart wouldn't have one I could use.

Then I had a brilliant idea! Let me digress here to say that while some people may think I'm crazy, my husband says I simply have my father's gift for basic problem solving. I'm creative. He's very kind.

There was a microwave oven in the motel room. Head lice would not survive even a few seconds in a microwave. I would simply microwave my gown, and any cooties unfortunate enough to be hiding therein would be zapped. When I mentioned it, my husband said, "But wouldn't that melt your gown?"

"No, because it's dry and wouldn't heat up like a wet object," I said. So I put it in the microwave for thirty seconds. I took it out and it was barely warm. Okay, if thirty seconds didn't hurt it, probably two minutes wouldn't, and I could know for certain that any organisms living in that gown would be dead, dead, dead.

I returned the nylon gown to the microwave, set it on two minutes and went about my business. The bell that signals the end of a timed period on the microwave didn't work, so it was several minutes before I thought to check on it. Imagine my horror when I opened the door to see a molten blob in the bottom of the microwave.

My dear, sweet husband didn't even say, "I told you so." He accompanied me back down the road to the Wal-Mart,where I purchased a gown I didn't particularly care for, but which was preferable to a tee-shirt. After thinking about it, I probably took a greater risk by wearing a new, unwashed gown than I would have taken by wearing the one I had worn the night before.

I must have done something right, though, because we never saw a cootie anywhere on the entire trip or when we returned home.