Don't give me cooties
November 18, 2010
Are girls contagious?
According to my 6-year-old former self, there is absolutely no doubt. Who can forget recess from the early years of school? Wasn’t that just a lovely time when you could enjoy playing on the swings and seesaws - an opportunity to stretch your mind through imagination? I never enjoyed any of those things, and was never granted a moment of peace when it came to recess in the first grade for one reason – cooties.
Cooties plagued my school and scared the cuss out of every little boy in my class. Everyone remained cool in class, but when recess hit, lives were at stake. Forget the voodoo magic of cootie shots. That stuff don’t work (I know that’s incorrect grammar, but that’s just how it is on the playground). I was trying think of how to describe my recess experience, but the closest I can come to realism is either a zombie apocalypse or the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan.
The origination of the deadly disease known as cooties was unknown at the time. The only known cure was to stay the cuss away from any females or else…or else what? What would actually happen if the plague inhabited my body? Would I explode? Lose the capability of breathing, or heaven forbid, become a woman? What a fearsome disease.
Fortunately, I had two best friends by my side to prevent any measure of breach (and I had their backs as well; I was a bro). One problem with contaminants is that they are everywhere. The biggest problem with contaminants is that there are always some that are more aggressive than others.
In our case, this was a girl named Adriana. Adriana had a crush on me, and was the primary reason why the playground was a battlefield.
Every recess my two friends and I ran for our lives away from Adriana, and every recess she tried to catch us. Fortunately, boys are faster and stronger than girls…let me attempt that sentence again. The three of us were much faster than Adriana, so we never had the problem of being caught; at least, not until that dreadful day of 1995.
On that dreadful day, everything was going fine. My friends and I kept our distance from Adriana, but I made one key mistake. I tripped on a tree stump, leaving me vulnerable to an open attack. Adriana was closing in on me to fast, and before I knew it, she jumped on my back.
At first I was terrified, thinking I might explode, but she just stayed on my back, even after I stood back up. Then I realized that I had just contracted the cooties disease in front of my two friends. But what were the effects? I could still breathe (breathe easy OBU :) and I never turned into a woman.
Am I exaggerating my first grade experience at least a little bit? You caught me. My experience was more like the final battle in The Last Samurai.
Obviously, at a younger age everything seemed black and white. There was no gray line quite yet. Blindly, I accepted the falsehood that girls could be the destroyers of the world (or is that true?).
I never gave any of them a chance to talk to me. I feel like even today it is easy to accept something without investigating it first, whether that be political, informational or gossip. Before trusting in something or someone, we have to make sure that we are completely encompassed in truth.
Secondly, we need to look beyond the simplicity in front of us and venture into the dark, the unknown. It is near impossible to be encompassed in the truth if you are closed minded - Just as I found out later that girls are actually the reason that I was birthed into this world, not the plagued destroyers from my nightmares.
Order different food than your “normal,” talk to people that you barely know or don’t know at all or maybe go to a different church for a change. Thank goodness Columbus was not closed minded, or he may not have found the new world. Seek truth and discover the unknown.
