In the “What are the chances?” department, Laura has an epic entry, and an incredibly unlikely one (which will be clear at the end of the story).

Two weeks ago, Ben was sent home from his fancy pants summer camp because, well, since there’s no easy way to say this, Laura will just go ahead and blurt it out:

He had lice.

Laura, completely under the gun with her work deadline (September 1 for those of you who can’t remember the small but deeply important details of Laura’s life), raced to Brookline to pick up Ben, who was in what looked like a holding cell in the “health” office which is in the basement of the private school’s main building. Anyone who has heard the whole thing about how you shouldn’t feel ashamed about your child having lice — that it’s not a sign of an unclean child or any fault of their grooming — that, in effect, just like shit, lice happens – can go ahead and move that to the “Farces in Life” column, because walking into that health office Laura definitely felt the weight of judgment from the two nurses who lead her to Ben. It seriously looked like one of those interrogation rooms in “Law and Order” — gray, with a gray metal desk — or maybe it was a pink room with a green table, Laura can’t remember — all she can remember is the weight of judgment and the feeling of shame that crept over her as the nurses — two of them — showed Laura the live bugs in Ben’s hair with a wooden tongue depressor.

Yes, you read that correctly: live bugs.

Laura had, of course, noticed that Ben had been scratching his head lately — in fact, not knowing exactly what to look for, she had, on two occasions around that time, looked through his head, once with a high-intensity light and another time with a magnifying glass, and had seen nothing. She tried to explain this to the two nurses — how there’s no way she would have missed the live bugs in his hair, they must have just hatched — but there weren’t’ buying any of it. Oh, yes, right, they must have thought. They just hatched.

Laura knew she’d be able to get a handle on those little bugs, but when they showed her with a judgmental flick of the tongue depressor, a nit — well, she just about lost it. Because she simply couldn’t believe how small the fucking thing was and how many of them were in his hair.

Maybe it’s because Ben has really long hair — recently trimmed, as a matter of fact! — kind of a British-rocker cut (that’s another long story about the really annoying woman who cut his hair) — that the nurses gave her such a disapproving look — you know, like, Maybe if he didn’t have so much hair he wouldn’t have lice — that kind of look — but whatever the reason, Laura put Ben in the car, and drove straight to CVS where she picked up a laundry list of items her pediatrician’s office was dictating to her over her cell phone….Nix Lice Killing Shampoo, metal nit combs (not plastic), Herbal Essence “Degunkifying” Shampoo, shower caps, olive oil….

Olive oil? Yes. Because after washing his hair with the lice killing shampoo, and after combing out the nits with the metal comb, Laura was instructed to cover Ben’s hair with olive oil and then cover his hair with a plastic shower cap and make him sleep with his oily covered head until the next day when she could, with the “Degunkifying” shampoo, wash it out. The olive oil, her pediatrician’s nurse explained, would kill the bugs by suffocating them (aided by the flourish of the shower cap).

Not only was she to do this that night — she was supposed to repeat the olive-oil-and-shower-cap-treatment about 8 times in the coming weeks — all in an effort, apparently, to “interrupt the hatching cycle” of the lice.

Laura called Brendan from the car and ordered him — in a tone that was rude and nasty and imperious and full of the weight of human hygiene — she was just in a really really bad mood by now — to start washing Ben’s bedding and clothes, and their bedding and clothes, and that whatever he couldn’t wash in the hottest water he should shove in the dryer for 20 minutes and dry on the hottest setting — the heat would kill the bugs. Brendan agreed to get started, but Laura could just tell that he wasn’t getting the enormity of the situation because he sounded too fucking calm on the phone. What is it with men? she couldn’t help thinking as she sped home with her car full of lice-killing supplies. They. Just. Don’t. Get. It. Ever.

Back home, Brendan was indeed in the midst of a major laundry project, so Laura spread out the supplies and dragged Ben’s big head of hair over to the sink. She washed his hair with the Nix, then had him sit on the kitchen stool by the sink so that she could start combing through his head with the metal comb, and once they got underway, Laura was struck by two things:

1) How many little tiny black bugs she was finding in Ben’s hair and

2) How fucking long it was taking to get through one small section of his hair

The other thing that was starting to occur to her was that getting the bugs out of his hair was the easy part. The truly hard part was trying to get the little teeny weeny white things out — since they are stuck, in a brilliant example of evolutionary-survival mode, to the hair with a kind of lice-glue. The more Laura tried to find the white things — and then remove them — the more frustrated she became.

And the more frustrated she became, the more she started to swear.

There’s a rule in Laura’s house — that Ben gets a dollar every time she or Brendan says a “bad word” — and let’s just say Ben was cleaning up that afternoon by the sink and probably earned enough money for a Wii, a Playstation3, an XBox 360, and about a thousand games. The “s” word was flying, the “f” word was flying, and all the while Brendan tended to the laundry in a manner that was, to Laura, suspiciously devoid of extreme anxiety and that could even be described as calm.

Combing and swearing and combing and swearing for hours — literally hours — and finally taking the project upstairs to the bedroom, so that Ben could watch TV while she combed — the lice event stretched on into the evening. Ben couldn’t have been a better sport about the whole thing, and only began to dissolve — although mildly — when he realized he was going to have to wear the plastic shower cap for the rest of the day and overnight.