Cooties

Cooties is a slang word in American English, used by children, referring to a fictional disease. Cooties are believed to be a highly contagious disease or condition, generally carried by members of the opposite gender. One supposedly catches cooties through any form of bodily contact, close proximity, contact with an "infected" person's possessions, or third-party transmission. In prepubescent children it serves as a device for enforcing gender separation. An older person may jokingly refer to cooties when talking about awkwardness toward sex and relationships. An alternative account of the adoption of the term into English traces it back to the American occupation of the Philippines, in 1898-1945. In most (Malay-derived) Philippine languages the term for head lice is "kuto"; American troops in the Philippines had ample opportunity to become familiar with the species, and quickly adopted local terminology.

Originally, the term implied body lice, but over time this became generalized to any sort of lice, including head lice. The term then evolved into a purely imaginary stand-in for anything that is considered repulsive. In British English the term lurgy may be used in the same context. However, lurgy has a broader definition and the two concepts are not necessarily equivalent.

The "cootie catcher"
Made of folded paper, the "cootie catcher" is one name for a popular hand held toy among school children. One surface is blank, the other drawn with dots, the "cooties". The joke is to show the blank side, then run the toy through someone's hair, revealing the dotted surface. It's made so each surface looks the same apart from the "cooties". The device is also sometimes called a fortune teller and used to tell fortunes

The "cootie shot"
Children sometimes "immunize" each other from cooties by administering a "cootie shot." One child typically administers the "shot" by reciting the rhyme "circle, circle / dot, dot / now you've got your cootie shot" while using an index finger to trace the circles and dots on another child's forearm. Yet another variation of the cootie shot is "circle, circle / square, square / now you have it everywhere," in which a child expecting an immunization is tricked by a friend into being infected with cooties throughout his or her body.

Cooties in Popular Culture
As with any cultural convention, or fondly remembered concept from childhood, cooties are often referenced in movies, music, on television, in novels and on the internet. References range from physical manifestation as fantastical creatures to more realistic portrayal as a cultural convention and to the traditional interpretation as lice.

Television

 * Cooties have been referred to in a number of episodes of The Simpsons. In one episode ("Homer: Bad Man") Bart claims they come from "a girl's butt" and in "The Wandering Juvie" Bart is told by Gina that there is no such thing as cooties (as well as a variety of fake "cootie-repelling" type items such as cootie insurance, which Bart appears to have bought).
 * Cooties is also mentioned in a Friends episode, during Season 5, when Joey referred to Rachel as having the cooties because Ross was selling all of his belongings which Rachel may have touched or come in contact with.
 * Cooties feature in the 1990s television series Dexter's Laboratory, as small, girly insects with curly snouts that inhabit the bedroom of Dexter's older sister, Dee Dee.
 * In one of the episodes of Codename: Kids Next Door, where the KND scientists believed that their underwater science lab is quarantined because of cooties.
 * In the Bobby's World episode "Cooties", kids start avoiding Bobby, believing he contracted cooties when he was kissed by Jackie.
 * On an episode of the Cartoon Network program Cow & Chicken, Chicken was kissed by a girl named Whiney. This leads everybody to believe that Chicken has a particularly lethal strain of cooties known as "Whiney Cooties". Symptoms included his beak falling down, his butt dissolving, his eyeballs popping out of his head, and his beak shriveling.
 * In one episode of the Cartoon Network program The Powerpuff Girls, cooties were featured prominently, since at first, they are the main weakness of the Rowdyruff Boys, as they explode when the Girls kiss them in order to defeat them. However, later on, when they are resurrected by Him, they are given anti-cootie vaccinations to make them immune to the Girls' kisses.
 * The MTV2 show Wonder Showzen featured an episode called "health" where a character called Wordsworth comes down with a case of the cooties; his friend Him uses it to his advantage and sells Wordsworth's encrusted cootie sores as snack treats.
 * One of the supposed cures "Circle Circle Dot Dot" is a song by Jamie Kennedy and Stu Stone that was featured on their MTV show Blowin' Up. The song references cooties.

Movies

 * In the 1994 Hollywood hit, Pulp Fiction, cooties are mentioned in the context of sharing a drinking straw.
 * Irwin catches cooties and mono from kissing Mandy in Billy and Mandy's Big Boogey Adventure.

Literature

 * Calvin, of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, does not seem to worry about catching cooties from close contact with individuals. However, he fears that he will catch them when he is the only boy on a playground full of girls. Apparently he believes that they are received from airborne transmission, as he begins breathing through his shirt and shouting "Air filter! Air filter!". In the same strip, Susie Derkins, one of the secondary characters who Calvin is with at the time, assures him that "Stupidity produces antibodies."
 * Cooties are mentioned as lice in a child's hair in "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee.

Music

 * "Cooties" was also one of the competitive song and dance numbers in the Broadway Musical, "Hairspray". It was sung by Amber announcing that her rival Tracy Turnblad has cooties. The song incorporates "Circle, Circle, Dot, Dot, Dot" as a dance move. In the motion picture, the song is sung by jazz vocalist Aimee Allen in the background of the dance-off in one of the final scenes, and is not sung by the character Amber.
 * Name of a Columbia, Missouri band known as the Cootie Shot Scandal.
 * Kooties is also a funk rock band from Australia