Critical lice are like body lice, which desert corpses to seek the living.
Theophile Gautier
(head lice—yuck)
I was fortunate as a child and then later when I was the mother of a young child…
we escaped the dreaded head lice outbreaks…
despite our enduring first daycare–then later, the joining of preschool.
I counted that as one small victory despite our son having had every other childhood illness
known to man–
even some that were more or less unknown—-
like 5th disease.
Who gets things like 5th’s disease other than my child??
Such was our lot.
I feared the Mayor would not fair much better than that of her dad when we found ourselves in
Scottish Rite Children’s hospital when she came down with salmonella at the ripe old age
of 2 months old.
By the time her dad had turned 1 year old, we celebrated that milestone in the outpatient wing at the
local hospital by having tubes put in his ears.
Luckily, however, The Mayor has so far been fortunate with her ears…having had only one
ear infection thus far….knock on wood!
So the notion of a lice exposure creeping back into our world leaves me nonplused.
I am not a fan of infestations.
And so I think of that commercial where the grandmother is on the phone with her daughter.
The mother is delicately explaining that the grandson has come down with a case of head lice.
We then see the grandson proudly extolling that there are thousands of lice in his hair…
this as he drags his head across the couch and proudly exclaims that now the couch has lice…
The grandmother quickly tells her daughter that she’ll just mail them their Christmas gifts.
Lice has that kind of effect.
Any poor person affected becomes persona non grata…
We avoid such like we do the plague…
and whereas it’s a lot like the plague, it’s just not nearly as deadly.
It’s more of a terrible nuisance and great inconvenience versus that of a promising death.
However, those infested may actually prefer death before it’s all said and done…
or maybe that would be the mother’s wish after tending to the cares of the infected children.
This is one malady that I do not wish to experience.
I don’t want to have to burn the sheets, the brushes, the pillows, the couch, etc….
while acting like some sort of rhesus monkey picking bugs from a child’s head.
And yet all this talk of lice has reminded me that we actually have a lice problem here in the blogosphere.
And boy can it spread.
I think most folks call what I’m thinking about as a problem with trolls…
But I like the analogy of trolls being more like an infestation of lice.
Trolls are ugly things that live under bridges and demand payment when folks want to cross
the said bridge.
Lice, on the other hand, are tiny yet irritating things.
They multiply rapidly.
They aren’t necessarily deadly but they are more or less irritating and near incapacitating.
Plus they are most difficult to rid oneself of.
So there I was innocently playing catch up…
trying desperately to read the latest from our dear friend the Wee Flea,
the Scottish Pastor David Roberston, when I saw that he had posted an ‘end of year’ post…a sort of year
end assessment.
In the post, he nodded to a previous post in which he had announced that he would be stepping down from
the post he’s held at his church there in Dundee, Scotland, St Peter’s Free Chruch Presbyterian—
a post as senior pastor for the past 27 years.
He and his wife will most likely move to Australia to help head up a ministry team down under.
As I had obviously missed this little announcement, I felt the need to offer my gratitude.
For you see that’s what being the chief aid to the Mayor has done to me…
I am now chronically a day late and a dollar short!
The Mayor is such the taskmaster they I have had to forgo much of what I once did—
that being reading for one thing…in particular, reading the postings of our friends The Wee Flea and
Bishop Gavin Ashenden being first and foremost.
And so as I scrolled down to leave a comment of gratitude to David for his diligence in fighting the good
fight, I saw a familiar face….a face of one who had left a myriad of comments…a myriad of tits for tats.
It was a dreaded “troll”…or what I am now dubbing a lice…or is that louse??
I think both words are most fitting in this case.
A lice, or louse, is one who visits the blog of a Christian and proceeds to engage the tit for tat
with said host.
Aka arguing.
Empty arguing.
For the lice, louse, is a nonbleiver…an atheist by trade.
A person who is so blinded by disdain, they can’t see the forest for the trees.
However, no one is really wanting to argue, fuss or cuss but the louse.
They are wearing blinders to everything and anything that they believe runs counter to their own limited
and angry empty vision.
They poke and prod…daring the host to engage in an endless back of forth of nowhere.
Some call it falling down into the proverbial rabbit hole.
The lice, or louse, becomes irritating and they don’t dare ease off….not when they know
they are becoming maddening.
Maddening is the only point they know…forget making sense or civil discourse.
Round and round they run…like a poor dog tethered to a chain on a pole.
Their next move is to go out and call all their kith and kin to come join in the fun.
They will also go back to their own blogs where they feature the victimized host that they’ve been “visiting”
while touting them as a grand old host worthy for others to come suck the lifeblood from…
They want you to forget blogging, forget intelligent sharing or dialogue, forget your original post…
you are now itching like a mad person, desperately trying to rid yourself of an infestation.
Then you hit the “block” button and suddenly you are happily cured and free.
But here’s the thing, they see where you’ve been, who your friends and family are and they
quickly head that way.
It’s an infestation by association.
I saw that on David’s blog.
There in plain sight was one of my former lice, louse, trying desperately to irritate
David.
But David is a smart man.
He nixed the lice.
They will none the less resurface where they are not blocked.
Maybe we’ll one day develop an anti-lice vaccine…
I think we call that the Blood of the lamb!
Here is David’s year-end post:
https://theweeflea.com/2018/12/28/quantum-22-2018-end-of-year-review/
For this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
Matthew 26:28
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