Cooties

In Pat & Diane’s garage
there’s a painting of a Willys
in a dry ditch outside
Flagstaff, peak in the background,
and a game of Cootie.

Hadn’t thought of Cootie
since, say, 1962. Wouldn’t
have, probly, not seeing it there.
(Athough hadn’t necessarily
thought of Willys either.)

Aunt Fenna & Uncle Bert
had Cootie. So did we.
May have been my introduction
to dice, or in that case
a single die.

In the sixth grade it was a game
Conservative Christian Right Wing Republican
Straight White American Male 6th graders
played at the expense of a homely girl.

She had ‘em & if she
brushed you, you passed ‘em on
to the next Conservative Christian male 6th grader.
We boys, of course were all so handsome
in a cute teutonic sort of way.

Have to wonder how straight
we all were even then, though.
Memory, bad memory, so you go looking
to Wikepedia. And learn
that Cooties do have gender content,

that they are a form of
“ repression of child sexuality,”
of which no one sure wanted
there to be any of
at Seymour Christian School.

Etymology interesting, if obscure.
At the turn of the 20th century U.S. soldiers
occupying the Phillipines were afflicted
with festering lice and referred to them
by their Tagalog term, "kuto."

Eventually, these soldiers returned
carrying their own version.
In time, the name stuck,
and the Scharper Company
marketed the game around 1949.

That’s the game in Pat & Diane’s garage,
classic lines on the little buggers
and a week ago you could have bid for
a similar set on eBay where it went for
a little less than $7.

Or, you could get the modern version
marketed by Hasbro® (of course)
which is really pretty ugly.
See for yourself at the company site.

There are Cooties in the Simpsons,
and lots of them in Calvin & Hobbes
& the MTV series Blowin Up.
In the UK they call them lugi
& they were in The Goons.

From 1912 to 1918, Willys
was the second biggest car company
in these United States. While Mr. Ford
who owned the biggest was against that war
Willys only survived because of

the next, in which it was
a damned fine little war machine
(although known by its pseudonym,
Jeep, also the name of a character in
Popeye, though no relation).

No doubt one of the big
reasons the USA rules the world
today, albeit badly. The name now owned
by Chrysler Daimler, reminding one of what

Blicero’s protégé Katje realizes on page
105 in Gravity’s Rainbow, that
“the real business of the war
is buying and selling.”