Girls might know what I am talking about. Let’s see if I can describe these correctly.
We would take paper and fold them into these sort of rose-like shapes. The resulting item would have four sides. On each side we’d write numbers. You’d have to choose a number, then we’d open and close it that many times. Then you chose another one, and same thing. Then you’d open that side of the flower, and inside would be written a fortune, or something like that.
Any ideas? I can try to describe it more if I need to.
Google paper fortune teller. I always call stuff like that “middle school origami”. I can still make paper throwing stars - I just made a handful the other day, out of the tear sheets from some netflix envelopes.
Incidentally, I once saw the instructions in a book and the thing was called a ‘candy dish’. Apparently the author thought that if you put it face-down on a table, the pockets where you’d put your fingers were just right for holding little candies.
Of course if you turn them upside-down like that the cooties can get out.
It’s so odd that this popped up! I was having a discussion about these very things just this weekend with my best friend, her husband & my boyfriend; we were trying to remember how they were made.
As for what they were called… I’m not sure if I ever knew. While discussing, we just called them “those fortune-telling thingies”.
We called them cootie catchers. Not sure that I ever really learned how to make one, though. I grew up in mid-Michigan (or, more accurately, middle of the lower peninsula).
Isn’t this the kind of thing where someone should be mapping what these are called in different parts of the Doper world?
That’s easy. What a boy would do is snap the thing near a girl, have her go through the rigmarole, and then have them open a flap. A drawing of bugs would be underneath (the thing was rigged, of course, so that was all they could get). The boy would say “those are the cooties I caught from you!”
In rural Oklahoma they were called fortune tellers. They’re easy to fold. Basically all you do is take a square sheet of paper, fold the 4 corners into the center, flip it over, and fold the 4 corners into the center again.
The hardest part is then positioning it so you can stick your fingers into the crevices.
