I have two friends who’ve become almost like roommates to me—they sleep at a low-barrier women’s shelter (one of the two is a cis dude, but they allow couples at the shelter), and then I pick them up and help them run their errands and whatnot. I got it from them.
They, in turn, got it from a scum fuck “friend” of theirs, who basically said something to the effect of:
Lol you know how you’ve been hanging out with me in this very cramped space on a regular basis? Well I had head lice that entire time, and so do you now. Oops.
I’m not too bothered by this. I felt a little bit of shame when I first found out, but it’s kind of gone away. My scalp itches a bit.
I've gotten kids in my unit who have lice, usually the family is quite poor and lives fairly remotely and has inadequate housing and everyone's cramped. Every time we have kids with lice, without fail, everyone's heads start itching. Totally psychosomatic, you hear someone near you has lice and your scalp itches.
There's dubious home remedies for lice, you mightve heard about using mayo or Vaseline to suffocate the lice. It doesn't work that well, the nits survive and then go back to munching. Sometimes box hair bleach kills them, the strong bleaching ones, but some nits can survive it and you'll get back to a head full of lice soon enough. There's shampoo you can get from a doctor/pharmacy that will kill them, do a few washes as prescribed and they die.
You can pick nits with a very fine tooth comb if you'd prefer. Just keep an eye out on your itchiness and see if you can get someone to do your hair and you'll do theirs.