The Odd Thought

Stray thoughts were drifting around the barn the way they do, and I suddenly wondered why adults don't get cooties.  You never hear a grownup say, "Eeuw!  Don't sit so close!  Don't touch me 'cause you've got cooties!"  All children know about cooties.  Cooties are capricious and contagious.  Boys get 'em more than girls; best friends never get 'em.  When I was a kid we made cootie catchers out of origami-style folded paper; work it just right and you could prove the other kid had cooties (or not).  There was a board game that I am sure was developed just so kids could identify a cootie, although without the cootie catchers, I never knew anyone who had actually seen one.  Kids are believers in the unseen (boogeymen and tooth fairies, for example) so it never occurred to us to doubt the reality of their existence.  The thing is, when is it, at what age do we stop getting cooties?  Does the taste of a grownup not appeal to cooties?  Is it a developed immunity as it is with, say, mumps?  Get 'em once and be safe forever?  Perhaps it is simply that imagination shrinks as the body grows.  I wonder.

Of all people, I ran into Tree Guy in town yesterday.  He said he and Number Two Son will be here this morning to at least get a start on the water line for the trees he's going to put in.  Wahoo!  I've been wondering where he's been.

I was in the cleaning supplies aisle looking for a new mop because of my last fiasco with the kitchen floor.  Next to me was a woman at least half a head shorter and hair greyer than mine.  She started laughing and said, "Here I am looking at this stuff like I'm actually going to clean something!"  I told her she was a woman after my own heart.  It seems she'd spilled red wine on an area rug given by her daughter-in-law and she was thinking about trying to scrub it out.  Then again, she thought she might just replace the carpet.  Another woman walked by and asked if we knew where the dusting spray might be.  In unison, as if we'd practiced, my companion and I said, "You dust?!"  That woman just muttered something and went on with her search, obviously not a kindred spirit.  The old(er) lady and I stood and chattered for a bit and she told me one of the funniest farm jokes I've heard in a while, but I can't put it in print.

Some things, like cooties, are better left to the imagination.