A few afternoons ago. I came in after taking Mikayla for a walk and I see my brother, who starts jabbering and pointing at my head.

"You got something there!" he said and I look in the mirror. Sure enough, there's a creature hanging on for dear life to a strand of my hair. And it looked like a tick, or at least, something that shouldn't be hanging on for dear life to a strand of my hair.

I do the necessary, cliched girly things. I scream, I flail about with my hands wildly, I scream some more, until my brother does the right thing by swatting at my head with a paper towel. He got the sucker and we examined it by poking at it cautiously. My other brother comes by and, as if by instinct, smacks it dead with his hand.

"You idiot! We were running tests!" I told him. And he looks at me like I'm retarded, and I tell him that we think it was lice, or something.

"OK," he said with infinite mock patience. "That's not lice. That's a ladybug."

I guess you could say it was a louse-y scare.