Why don't adults have headlice all the time?

[Caligula]

I'm wondering about this. Now that we all do continental style greetings and double kiss each other and we're all out binge-drinking and vomiting in the streets and snogging each other and touching heads that way, adults must touch heads as often as children do. So how comes we're not infecting each other all the time?

Eh? Eh?

Don't know.

They don't live on me though. I am nit-proof

i think cos we dont sit with our heads close together for long periods of time so nits dont get much chance to crawl across. i have had them several times since kids started school cos i do sit with my head close to theirs

I wonder that too. Ive worked with children for about 12 years and never got them. I even worked in Romanian orphanges where they were rife. At that time I had bum length hair and used to let the shaven- headed kids hang off it 5 at a time.

I think they need a prolonged lean to walk over to another head. Children sit snuggled up together or bent over the same toy. Headlice are not just poised waiting to boing onto another head during a quick peck on the cheek.

Where does the binge drinking bit come into it exactly? [confuddled emoticon]

franky - I'm just trying to think of ways the British have become more tactile! Binge drinking is one of them!

I believe its hormonal - adult men are least likely to catch them, then women, then kids. They don't like the hormones we grown=ups give off!

Caligula - can I come on a night out with you please?! Sounds wild!

P.S. The little blighters LOVE me - grrrrr

I was always told that adult men can't get them - don't know if it's true or not!!!!!

I worked as a teacher for 8 years and never got them (even though one year there was a child in my class who had so many lice they used to fall off his head on to his book [yuk]!!! Lovely kid - but very neglected!!!

DD caught them at nursery and then I caught them from her, having just had DS.

Had to greet a midwife at the door with towel on my head and say "Sorry I'm treating myself for headlice"!!!

You've never seen someone step back so quickly!!!!

My husband never caught them though!

they normally need more than a 1 second touch of heads to colonise a new head!

yes men can have them. my dh has had - only one or two when we have been infested.

my oldest lad however has always seemed to be immune. always. now my nan says this has something to do with the amount of fluid under the scalp - i dunno if thats true.

i can say proudly that since we moved darn south we have been nit free. and i delouse after each visit up north. - cos i know who has them.

I've always wondered who first sat there and decided that we needed to pick em out, and that they weren't just a part of us. Is it some natural instinct like chimps picking eachother over??

strangely - only time I got nits in my teaching career was in the UK!! and dh never caught them. Thought I did not get themn largely as I taught high school.... but I was proved wrong.

I did work in a primary/secondary school combined and the policy there was to send the child home when nits were detected and then a note went home to all parents that nits had been found in the school along with info on how to treat their hair. Generally child not allowed back in until hair had been treated.