My Head Itches

I could post an overheard cell phone conversation every day, but so many of them are of the "What? Wait, when did she say that? No, you're kidding," variety, that it's hard to imagine rendering them any more interesting than that in print. Today on the bus, though, I got 20 alarming minutes of a middle-aged woman talking to what turned out to be her mother, that began, "I have to take Jamie to get a really short hair cut tomorrow."

The Jamie in question was undoubtedly one of the two little boys she had with her, who were chatting about video games and telling each other dumb little-boy jokes, seemingly oblivious to the fact that there was a lice outbreak at Jamie's school, and while Jamie's classroom wasn't affected, he shares a table with Katie, and Katie's little brother Sean, you know, Melissa's son, has lice, and they didn't even know about it.

"I'm going to have them cut it like a Marine," the mother told Jamie, when she finally got off the phone -- the conversation with grandma had included a lot of F's and A's and D's, presumably standing in for words she didn't want little Jamie and his brother to hear, but inexplicably, it also included a lot of "shits" -- and asked "do you know what that means?"

I couldn't hear whether Jamie did know what getting a Marine haircut entailed, but I did hear his mother warn him not to talk about it at school. I guess she didn't want Jamie to tell Katie that Sean, her brother and Melissa's son, had lice. But telling the entire bus? That's okay.