Return of the Cootie-Catcher

A couple of months ago, the kids in Daniel's class were all playing with "cootie-catchers." For the uninitiated, a cootie-catcher is made from a square piece of paper, the corners of which have been folded in toward the center. Then the paper is flipped over, the corners folded in again, and the whole thing opened up like a four-petaled blossom. Kids draw colors on the outer flaps and write numbers on the inner flaps. Beneath the inner flaps are the "fortunes," which are either predictions such as "You will be rich," or Magic 8-Ball type answers to yes/no question such as "Of course" or "Forget about it." In fact, when I was in school, we called them fortunes instead of cootie-catchers.

Back in November, the kindergartners and first graders didn't know how to make the cootie-catchers themselves, however. They would ask their teacher and the occasional parent--me, for one, once I remembered how to do it) to make the cootie-catchers for them. After a few days, the fad died out.

It's back, however, and yesterday afternoon Daniel asked me to make another cootie-catcher. I obligingly folded up the paper for him, while he watched closely. A little later, I saw him with a piece of paper, folding away, but I never saw the result of his construction.

That night when he was going to bed, Daniel seemed out of sorts. I asked him if anything was wrong, but he just shook his head.

"Do I have to go to school tomorrow?" he asked.

"Yes. Why, don't you want to?"

"He shook his head no and trudged off to bed, looking as though he was close to tears.

I sat downstairs, worrying that something had gone wrong at school today that he hadn't told me about. When Tab came down after having put Daniel to bed, I asked him if something was bothering Daniel.

"Yes, but you can fix it. He's upset because he can't make a cootie-catcher." Tab said when he asked Daniel what was wrong, Daniel wouldn't tell him at first, but when he finally admitted the problem, he burst into tears.

As sympathetic as I felt toward Dans, I almost laughed out loud in my relief. I had worried that he'd had fight with one of his friends or a conflict with his teacher. Of course, in Daniel's opinion this was almost as bad.

So this morning I taught Daniel how to make his own cootie-catchers. It turns out he already knew what to do but hadn't been careful about making his folds, causing his cootie-catchers to come out crooked. I demonstrated how to line up the edges and crease the folds sharply. He gave me a hug afterward and thanked me for showing him.

This afternoon he came home with a new one he'd made himself at school. He said he'd been making them for the other kids, too.

"Are you the only one at school who knows how to make a cootie-catcher?" I asked him.

"No, Morgan knows too. I taught her," he answered.

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