My First Conspiracy Theory!

I started concocting my own conspiracy theories when I was very, very young. I think I was five when I first decided that there was probably one big mega-corporation that really secretly owned just about every other business out there. How else could all the products be so similar? I never said anything about it, of course, because I thought if THEY knew that I knew, then I would be in trouble (I read far too much as a child).

When I was seven, I first became suspicious of my television set. Shows would report that they had "over 7000 viewers" or "an audience of 50,000." But how did they know? Reasonably, I figured, you could tell how many TVs were tuned to each station. But how did you know how many people were watching each TV? Quite clearly, we were living in Soviet Russia, where TV watches you.

However, these were but the vague musings of a girl who read too much science fiction compared to my next big trick.

I figured out what cooties were.

That's right. Cooties are a giant conspiracy.

Do you remember the rhyme, from way back in elementary school?

Circle circle dot dot
Now I've got my cootie shot
Circle circle square square
Now I've got it everywhere
Circle circle knife knife
Now I've got it all my life

If we examine that for a minute, it bears an obvious resemblance to a vaccination for the disease of cooties.

And where do you get cooties from? The opposite sex.

How do you get it? Touching.

Beginning to sound like anything else we know?

Cooties are a modern sort of fairy tale, warning children about the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases before they're really old enough to know much, if anything, about what sex is. The "cootie shot" represents abstinence, birth control, methods of safe sex to prevent STDs, vaccinations against things like HPV, and treatments for STDs once they are contracted, all at once.

How does it do this? Let's examine them one at a time.

Abstinence: the only way to avoid cooties completely is to stay away from the opposite sex and not let them touch you (or people of the same sex who have contracted it, interstingly enough. This could perhaps indicate a growing acceptance of homosexuality in our culture, if cooties is transmissible along same-sex pathways. :) Or it could just be a childre's game).

Birth control/ methods of safe sex/ vaccinations: I'm going to lump these three together, as they can often go together, as shown by condoms, and are all measures taken (for the most part) before you engage in sex. The cootie shot, in my experience, was most often administered as a preventative measure when you knew that you were likely to be touched a lot by the boys- before recess, for example. This seems a fair analogue to birth control and safe sex.

Treatment for already contracted STDs: This one seems a little more controversial. After all, doesn't everyone have the cootie shot for "all their life?" No, of course not. How many times did you sing the cootie song, tracing circles on your friends' arms in elementary school? More than once, for most of you, I should think. The cootie shot, then, is not a one-off solution to the problem. It could easily represent lifelong treatment for a chronic condition such as herpes, or a more contracted medication regimen for chlamydia or gonorrhea.

So, cooties represent STDs fairly accurately. But this isn't something that children were likely to have come up with on their own, though it certainly is possible. Instead, I think it much more likely that adults either created or adapted a pre-existing game in order to subtly teach children about STDs and abstinence and/or safe sex.

Sure, it may not be the most diabolical plot in the world... but... I was like... ten... when I came up with this. Give me some credit. Also, a cootie shot.