cooties For sure! don't touch girls.... they're dangerous. 000712 ... Effingham Fish Funnerest game in the whooooooooole world. 011216 ... KindreDSpirit There exists a photograph of my grandfather, sitting on the floor, playing Cooties with me. I am six: fat blonde braids tied with yellow yarn bows hang down over each shoulder. Grandpa is looking down. His hands dangle amidst the plastic heads and legs--yellow, purple, garish green, bright against the dull brown of the carpet. The picture, I am sure, was intended to capture the rarity of the moment. I do not recall another time when my grandpa sat on the floor, much less played a child's game with any of us. So I know: I would still remember it, even without the photo. They placed it on a table at his wake, six days after Christmas. It lay among many other pictures, black and white, faded color, or tinted in pastel by my beautiful grandmother, long ago. The Cooties photo was the only familiar one. I suddenly comprehended the stately splendor and the tragedy of my grandfather's secret life, too late to ask for the stories that had long lain hidden from all those near him, until cancer began to loosen his tongue. They were still hidden from me. The day before his last day, he looked at me from over the plastic mask (the mask that seemed almost to be killing him, at the very end) and I saw the recognition flash through his eyes. Once only. In a sudden seizure of my heart and lungs, I wished I had my violin to play for him, knowing that would speak more than the few words than I had to give him. And I wondered if, when he saw me that last time, what he saw was little-girl braids over colored plastic pieces on the floor. 020319 ... KindreDSpirit Whoa. Sorry... I kinda killed the jovial cootie mood. 020319 ... silentbob somehow related to mxpx 020319 what's it to you? who go blather from