BEAUTY SHOP TALK

by

Vicki Charmaine Bunch

They're little. They're mean. And they're showing up in the boxer shorts of city leaders.

They're ticks--harbingers of summer, each one an exquisitely designed biological weapons plant with enough lethal sporozoans and spirochetes to level a town the size of Lubbock.

The unwelcome guests are becoming intimately attached to members of the exclusive Cotton Mouth Country Club.

Minnie Ledbetter, grand dame of Axel society, is in a tizzy. "Decent people must do everything in their power to drive out these unwashed interlopers," she declared at a recent board meeting.

Mayor Stubby Bean obliged by declaring a state of emergency.

"Steer clear of the golf course," he warned. "Especially if you're a poor shot."

It has been observed at other tick-stricken courses that bad golfers fare worse, as fate would have it, for ticks prefer the rough to a manicured green.

State parasitologist Vernon Jackson came to town, and none too soon. He told concerned residents that ticks can live in your home throughout their entire life cycle, awaiting a host for as long as three years. He described how a female tick becomes engorged and falls off you so she can go lay her eggs. He said ticks excrete neurotoxins and spread Lyme disease, human ehrlichiosis, and other illnesses.

If you're like most folks, you've already found a few of the little buggers in your armpits, under your socks, or crawling out of your ear.

The State has cracked down by setting up inspection centers throughout the city where citizens are required to bare all for the sake of the community. Officials from the extension agent's office show everybody a training film of baboons picking the lice off one another. Such grooming is instinctive in humans as well, but it has degenerated into the sort of things I do at the beauty shop.

When they get to the inspection site, people line up in long chains and peer at each other's backsides, the most difficult area to get at. This procedure has shown unexpected benefits. For example, somebody discovered Bud Walgren's wedding ring in the folds around his middle. Missing for over two years, it had been the subject of an ugly dispute between Bud and his third wife Delinda.

New friendships have been forged and old ones deepened by the intimate dance of body inspecting. Although many Axelites were at first reluctant to "act like perverts," they soon discovered tick grooming was as natural as falling off a log. Psychological tests reveal an overall improvement in the mental health of area residents.

For others, however, all the hubbub exacerbates a pathological fear of parasites. I personally have been terrified of them ever since Sonny and I caught body lice ten years ago. The whole experience was such a nightmare--from the way the ladies at the drugstore sneered at me when I bought Qwell to the way I had to boil our underwear.

Pearl Vickers said I must have post traumatic stress. Pearl teaches meditation at community ed, and she thinks I might also have OCD, short for obsessive-compulsive disorder, the way I get all worried once or twice a month and start boiling my Wonderbra again.

Trust me, lice are not something you want to get when you run a beauty shop. And neither, frankly, are ticks.

There may be more to it though. Ticks sort of remind me of men. When you first notice them they're minding their own business and look kinda' cute. But before you know it, they want you, they need you, and they'll suck you dry.