Cootie catcher

[Johanna N Franklin]

    Oddly enough, though I remember these devices perfectly from the mid
1980s on, and I do remember them being called cootie catchers, I don't
remember them being used to catch cooties.  We used them mainly to tell
fortunes, and we might have snapped at each other with them, but I think
the snapping was just a secondary use and not necessarily intended to
catch vermin.  Could the cootie catching have lessened and using them to
tell fortunes increased with time, or was my school an anomaly?

    Johanna

Excerpts from mail: 6-Aug-100 Cootie catcher by Rudolph C Troike at U.ARIZO
> Just to contribute to the regional distribution of "cootie catcher", I can
> verify that the term was used in Brownsville, Texas schools in the early
> to mid 1940s. Mostly cooties were assumed to reside, presumably like lice,
> in the hair, so the head was the main target of the device, which had
> small circles and squiggles drawn in it for evidence that the effort had
> been successful.
>
>         Rudy


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