Well, he certainly didn’t mistook them for little bitty hats

Cootie Man Blues is the music in my head here on the bus ride to work with a fellow scrubbing and pinching lice from his neck and head. One Saturday this month, I watched an elderly, mentally ill, homeless White man wearing an unwashed, black Chinese kung fu shirt with white trim and sideways frog buttons with Catholic rosary beads dangling a Christian crucifix around his neck pick lice off the back of his shaggy neck. He placed each louse down in his lap. Carefully and exactly with callous precision. On his dirty pants. With his dirty hands. After each time he did so, the man bent over to stare down hard at them. Really hard, as if he was squinting into a microscope. Then he reached back to his shaggy neck to pinch out more cooties to put in his lap. Oh, Lord, start me up some three-chord Cootie Man Blues. Continue reading →