Cooties: (n) a louse, especially one affecting humans, as the body louse, head louse, or pubic louse.

I think cooties have been eradicated.

I’m not talking about the little bug—I’m speaking of the stigma that was placed upon very young girls by very young boys at a time in the
past when these fellows insisted that the lasses “had cooties.”

Matter of fact, as a young boy in the third grade, I was desperately trying to keep girls from touching me because their fingertips could transfer these cooties onto, or into, my body.

Of course, it was all purely sexual tension.

Every young dude secretly hoped that some soft hand would graze his back as he ran away, and that he would embrace that early sexual sensation of exhilaration.

But what really concerns me, since it is nearly completely impossible that some eight-year-old mind was aware of a louse called a “cootie,” that there apparently was some mother or father began this rumor, trying to keep their children romantically separated.

I don’t think any eight-year-old boy went to the dictionary and said to himself, “What makes a girl so different? Oh! Aha! Here it is! Cooties!”

After it was hatched, I can see how the rumor spread—similar to the varmints themselves.

But this nasty representation of the female of the human species certainly had to begin in the mind of some mama or papa, who thought it best for their offspring to remain asexual as long as feasible.

What a waste of time—considering that within a few short months, these boys and girls would be all over each other, even if there were cooties in play.

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