As early as 1921, a dice game called Cootie was a favorite at wedding showers. Women competed in teams of two to draw the very bug that had tormented many a husband-to-be during the war.

can boost immunity to cooties. In many play areas, female and male populations will draw chalk dividing lines to separate the genders thereby limiting exposure. Complete avoidance of the opposite ...

Kids love games of exclusion. This usually manifests itself in games of ‘keep away,’ having someone ‘catch cooties,’ or the ever-popular ‘No Brian club.’ [Rob] wrote in to tell us ...

A cootie catcher is full of carefully-folded dichotomies. It’s centuries-old origami performed by kids (usually), many of whom live far away from the device’s country of origin. Delicate in ...

We all know that cooties aren’t real. (Besides, we’ve all been vaccinated sufficiently as kids, so we’re safe.) But if they were real, what disease would cooties be? Well, let’s look at ...

Hirschfeld, an anthropologist at the New School for Social Research, cooties are “a social contaminant that pass from one child to another,” made up of “the invisible particulates associated with ...