Somehow, despite 16 years of being a parent, I have never had to deal with lice. You could say that’s because I’m really clean, but you’d be wrong, first because I haven’t mopped my kitchen floors all summer, and second because lice infestations have nothing to do with cleanliness or a lack of it.

I guess we’ve just been lucky.

Recently, however, we spent the day with someone who ended up having a lice. The news came as a shock. As my youngest son, Lindell, loudly and somewhat frantically said in the middle of a grocery store after he found out, “Does this mean we all have lice now?”

“You mean ICE?” I said, trying not to alarm people around us. “Yes, we have ice for the cooler now.”

“No, I said LICE, Mom. Do we have lice?” He vigorously scratched at his head.

Shoppers quickly dispersed from our general area. Some of them ran with their shopping carts and clutching shopping bags closer to their chest. We probably would have been more popular if we had yelled “mice” inside the grocery store.

I grabbed Lindell by the arm, the way that panicked mothers do, and whispered forcefully that we do not have lice. Even as the words were coming out of my mouth, however, I felt a slight itch above my ear. All of the boys were shaking out their hair now, as if that would help. We had just been to the beach, so bits of sand flew out, and that made the quarantine circle around us widen even further.

“We do not have lice,” I said again.

That night, as I lay my head on my pillow, I thought about lice and started itching again. I was tired though, and that was good because I didn’t have the energy to Google anything. Later my friend Shelley would text and say, “I suggest that you not research what lice look like up close.”

The next morning, I woke up to a text from someone else who had been with us that fateful day: “I have lice. Starting the treatment now.”

My kids were still half asleep, but not for long. I leaped from my bed, pulled on a robe, and ran into their rooms, scratching my head and yelling, “We all have lice! Get up and strip the beds!”

You can imagine how distressing that sort of thing is to wake up to. I began checking heads as soon as the boys stood up. Owen’s didn’t look good, neither did Lindell’s. But Ford’s hair, as far as I could tell, looked fine.

“Ford’s clear, but the rest of us will start treatment today,” I said, and before I had finished, Ford ran to the bathroom, slammed the door behind him and locked it.

“I’m quarantining myself in this bathroom,” he announced.

“What about food and water?” Lindell asked.

“I have water,” he said, turning on the sink, “but please slip me food under the door.”

Next we heard the shower turn on.

“You can’t wash out lice, Ford,” I yelled through the door.

“I know,” he yelled back. “But if I have to live inside this bathroom now, I might as well pass the time with a shower.”

So the rest of us lice-infested people began strip- ping beds and throwing pajamas in the washing machine. I started a pile of blankets, too. Basically, anything that was fabric and not nailed down was stripped from its home and put into a dirty pile in front of the washing machine.

Next, Lindell and I went to the drug store to get the medicine. He itched all through the store like a dog with fleas. When other customers saw the box of Rid in my hand, they parted like the Red Sea and “graciously” let us go to the head of the line.

“Uh, good luck with that,” the teenage cashier said as we left. He was scratching his head.

Back home, I started reading the instructions. That’s when I read the warning about ragweed allergies. Lice medication is made from chrysanthemums and can cause a serious allergic reaction in anyone with a ragweed allergy. Both Owen and I are allergic.

“I’ll just live with the lice,” Owen said. “I’m not getting an allergy shot.”

“You’d rather live with bugs on your head than get a shot?” Ford yelled from the bathroom.

“What if we don’t even have it?” I considered aloud for the first time, staring at the piles of sheets, blankets and sofa covers on the floor of the laundry room.

I called a friend who is a nurse and asked him to come check our heads. The verdict: no lice. Ford came out of the bathroom and our heads stopped itching.

But I’ll still be doing laundry for another few weeks, and I bet your head is itching now, too, isn’t it?