# Contagion Tag

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contagion-tag/803302>\
**Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\
**Created:** [December 2, 2017, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contagion-tag/803302 "2017-12-02T04:50:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![AWB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bb73d2/32.png) [@AWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AWB)\
**Post date:** [December 2, 2017, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contagion-tag/803302/1 "2017-12-02T04:50:57Z")

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in today’s column [Why does everybody in the world play tag?](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3371/why-does-everybody-in-the-world-play-tag), Cecil mentions that “In some variants the children pretend that the touch carries some form of contagion.”

This sound like what we used to play growing up in western Colorado, simply called “Girl Germs”. If a boy accidentally touched a girl and other boys saw it, they would mock him, chanting “♫ AWB has girl germs ♫”. Said boy would then be it, chasing the others until he tagged them, then chant that the new “It” has the girl germs now.

Girls of course played the inverse of this, “Boy Germs”.

Funny, we didn’t play this much beyond 2nd grade. 😉

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**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\
**Post date:** [December 2, 2017, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contagion-tag/803302/2 "2017-12-02T05:29:14Z")

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“Germs”? In my day, in Maine, it was “cooties”.

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**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\
**Post date:** [December 2, 2017, 11:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contagion-tag/803302/3 "2017-12-02T11:59:52Z")

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Yeah. And cooties were strictly on the girls. At least if we boys had 'em, the girls didn’t tell us.

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**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\
**Post date:** [December 6, 2017, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contagion-tag/803302/4 "2017-12-06T06:54:52Z")

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Cooties was a fine generic epithet for creepy people (meaning, at that age, all similarly-aged persons of the opposite datatype). But cooties really meant head lice.

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**Author:** ![GreysonCarlisle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@GreysonCarlisle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreysonCarlisle)\
**Post date:** [December 6, 2017, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contagion-tag/803302/5 "2017-12-06T16:46:03Z")

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For us, sad to say, it was never “boy germs” or “girl germs”, but always some unfortunate unpopular kid’s germs.