Mercer Island mom making career out of being a nitpicker
Jun 5, 2012, 11:54 AM | Updated: Oct 11, 2024, 1:32 pm
Nancy Gordon isn’t |
A Mercer Island mom is making a career out of nitpicking,
literally. She runs a business that picks nits from
people’s hair.
“We do lice removal,” says Nancy Gordon. “That is what we
do.”
Gordon tells 97.3 KIRO FM’s Ross and Burbank Show that
it all started when her daughter got lice about seven
years ago.
“At the time when she got it, my youngest son had been
newly diagnosed with Autism, and we would not use any
toxic treatments on her, so I just began exploring what I
could use on her to do lice and nit removal,” Gordon says.
Her experimentation, which included only non-toxic
treatments, eventually got all the lice off her daughter’s
head.
“I was very successful at it, and then friends and
neighbors started asking me for help,” says Gordon, who
grew her neighborhood service into a career.
Gordon now runs five “Lice Knowing You” salons that serve
clients in Washington and Oregon.
“I’m not exactly sure why it’s lice that don’t make me
squeamish. Other kinds of bugs totally gross me out and
freak me out,” says Gordon, “but lice for some reason
don’t even phase me.”
She’s aware that’s not true for everyone.
“Only one of my locations actually will allow me to use
the full name Lice Knowing You,” says Gordon, who
acknowledges there is a stigma associated with lice. Her
other salon locations say LKY Salon on the marquee, at the
request of the building landlords.
She says the abbreviated sign is not all bad, and that
many clients prefer it.
“Part of our business is we try to be discreet with what
we do. There are still stigmas attached,” says Gordon, who
considers efforts to help remove that stigma a part of her
job.
“Anybody can get head lice, poor, rich it doesn’t matter
your race or religion, anybody can get head lice,” says
Gordon. “We’re trying to get people to talk about it more
so we can deal with the problem better and it doesn’t
spread as rapidly.”
Host Dave Ross says he once had a negative view of lice,
“until it happened to my kids.”
“Then I realized, I’m not poor. We’re not unclean in some
way and we have it, so stigma removed,” says Ross. “From
that moment I figured if we can get it, anybody can get
it.”
Co-host Luke Burbank says he remembers his younger sisters
coming home with lice.
“I remember my poor parents tearing the house apart
washing every single linen,” says Burbank. “Then they’d be
like, ‘We got this thing beat,’ and then they see my
sister Sarah itching her head and they’d go, ‘Oh no. It’s
back.'”
Burbank asked Gordon how her treatment keeps lice from
populating throughout the house.
“Ninety-nine percent of a head lice issue is in your head.
A very small percentage is in your environment,” says
Gordon.
She says after 12 hours off its host, a louse becomes like
a chicken with its head cut off.
“It might be walking around, but it can’t lay eggs, it
can’t feed, it can’t do any damage anymore.”
Once the lice is gone from your head, which Gordon says is
the key, “You have to do 100 percent removal, because
leaving even one viable egg in the hair, you’re going to
be back where you started,” she says.
After that, she says it’s just a matter of washing your
sheets and putting hair styling tools and accessories in
the freezer.
Listen to Nancy Gordon on Ross and Burbank:
By JAMIE GRISWOLD, MyNorthwest.com Editor
