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I don't know when I fell prey to dandruff exactly. It was not a problem when I was a child, so I figure that it must have been about the time that puberty kicked in, but even that seems too late given the happenings that surrounded the sudden accumulation of dead skin on my scalp.
The fear of lice was what first brought the dandruff to my attention--and to everyone's attention. A lice outbreak had occurred when I was in fifth grade, and then my sister herself had become host to the pests after a trip to Eugene, Oregon, when I was in eighth. Meanwhile, there had also been an attack of scabies at the school. Scabies were Middle Eastern pests that liked to torture people in the hair along their legs, the back of their hands, and their groin; they'd come back with a few college students associated with the school who had been to visit Jordan over the summer. No handshakes became the rule for about three months.
Thus, bugs of the body were high on my mind during these years, and each night, I inspected my head in the mirror. Although I noted little white flakes in my hair, I pretended they did not exist. The reason for this was twofold. First, I had read up on lice. Lice eggs, the little white nits that the lice lay in one's hair, stuck to the hair--they didn't flake off. Hence, I could safely assume that these little white things in my hair were not lice eggs, although I suspected that in reality they were--and that the lice were obviously profligating wildly atop my head. Second--and this was the most important--if I really did have lice, that would mean I would have to stay home from school and thus make up all sorts of homework and get crazy behind schedule. I did not want this to happen, so it was best to pretend the problem wasn't there.
When my sister was pulled out of school for lice, I was pulled into the office for inspection. By this time, a few years after the initial outbreak, I was well aware that what I had was not lice but dandruff, dandruff to the extreme. The nurse at first thought, because of the large accumulation of white bits in my hair, that I did have lice, but a second opinion quickly confirmed the obvious: This was not lice but dead skin.
How did I know this already? Because somewhere in here, between fifth and eighth grade, my mom discovered the dandruff as well and took to picking at my scalp. I had what she described as "cradle cap," whole sections of the skull where skin was simply peeling away, as if I had a constant sunburn under my hair. How she discovered this, I don't know, but what resulted eventually was that she took on a custom I saw demonstrated by monkeys on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Animal Kingdom. On that show, mother monkeys sat their children before them and combed through their hair, looking for dirt, for scum, for bugs and pests. My mom did the same, having me prop my head in her lap, as she picked away at my scalp.
In time, it became a habit, and one that would transfer to others. One of my Mike friends took to doing the same. And then, with no one digging in my hair, picking the skin off along the top of my head, I began to do the same. It got to be that I would pick so much that I would bleed, and soon scabs formed in place of the loose flaking skin that had been there.
Mom bought me some dandruff shampoo. This helped little. And then she insisted on shampooing my hair for me, rubbing extra hard against the scalp. This helped a little more. Still, my head was a constant harborer of the dead.
I was getting older. My friend Tim had taken to washing his hair regularly. I had washed it, growing up, once a week, as I had been trained. But I was entering high school, and I still had the flake problem, and my hair, by week's end, was oily, and the flakes would stick to the oil, and it was, in my view, generally unattractive. And this fact did not escape Tim and others.
I wanted to wash my hair every day. Mom wouldn't let me. Hair was supposed to have oil. It gave it natural luster and sheen--and it made for healthy hair. (So had been the style and concept in the 1930s, I have since read.) She agreed to twice a week, but this did little good. Why I didn't just ignore her command, I don't know--I stuck to twice a week. I was a good kid.
But at school, by sophomore year, my hair had, in my mind, taken on legendary status. This was confirmed one day when Tim said something about how gross it was in front of several other friends. I said something about how my mom wouldn't let me wash my hair more than twice a week, and then I socked him. Nothing came of it. I was not much of a fighter, and I was a little guy, so for whatever reason, when I did hit someone, I was generally ignored rather than attacked back. (Indeed, as a smaller child yet, I was kept out of playing football with the other kids in class because of my size--"You'll get hurt," they noted.)
But I should not say that nothing came of it. Word got round. Jon had socked someone. I heard about it from my friend Elmer, a senior that year, who had the locker above me. "Heard you hit somebody today," he said. If what Tim had said had been embarrassing, having others know and talk about how I had hit someone was even more embarrassing. I was fifteen, after all, and certainly too old to fight.
At home, I begged to be given the right to wash my hair when I wanted, as often as I wanted. I begged, and I begged. And my mother, my mother, rescinded, finally. I could wash my hair every day if I wanted to. It wasn't good for my hair, but I'd learn. I never learned--I just washed.
But the dandruff did not go away. It stayed with me for several more years in the same proliferation, though the constant washing did help to at least keep the flakes from building up in such great amounts. To this day, when I cut my hair, though, I note the flakes scattered throughout the castaway hair. When I wear a dark suit, flakes still gather on my shoulders and lapels no matter how many times I brush them away.
And another habit remains with me from those years. Whenever my hair is on its longer side, I still, even though neither my mom nor any friends dig their fingers into my scalp any longer, I still scratch away at the top of my head, loosing the dead hair from the scalp. A nervous tick, perhaps, but also a testament to the childhood that is still with me.
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