First, I would like to apologize to anyone who, at one time or another, might have gotten cooties from my family or me. I grew up during a time when staying home from school because you were sick was not an option. My mom's Momometer only measured serious maladies — puke and blood. She never authorized sick-day passes to her kids for runny noses, coughs or fevers. So when my kids cried, "Mommy, I don't feel good," I sent them to school anyway.

"Shake it off," I said. "Be grateful you're not bleeding or puking."

But times change. I got older and began looking at my family and relatives as Primary Hosts. They believed years of living together made us immune to one another. We were a close-talking family who took bites from each other's sandwiches. Kids drank from my water bottle then announced minutes later they had a stomachache.

Then there were the Secondary Hosts, friends who wanted sips of my strawberry mojitos, girlfriends who asked, "Can I borrow your lipstick?"

Lastly, there were the Third Hosts — strangers and acquaintances. Once I caught their cooties, not enough orange juice, broth or Vita-Booster could kill those.

I believe my most recent case of the cooties came from a Third Host, an acquaintance at the gym during spin class.

When a fellow spinner sat down on the bike next to me, I asked, "Where have you been?" I haven't seen you in a while."

She leaned over to me and sniffled, "I have this cough. And I can't get rid of it." Then she barked a cough that sent goose bumps from my toes to the top of my head. I thought, for god's sake, cover your mouth. I held my breath and pedaled at a Lance Armstrong speed. But it was too late — a fine mist of her cooties sprayed my space.

A few days later, I felt a tickle in the back of my throat. My head felt like a balloon about to pop. It was followed by chills and hot flashes.

My last cootie shot was in the third grade. Fred Sparks kissed me unexpectedly at the drinking fountain. My girlfriend immediately took an invisible cootie syringe from her uniform skirt pocket. She pulled back on the syringe and tapped it (expelling any air bubbles) a couple times. "Hurry, I don't have much time!" I squealed. She swiped my arm with an invisible alcohol wipe. Then subcutaneously injected the cootie vaccine into my arm.

Now, it was too late for an inoculation. "It was that woman at the gym," I moaned to my husband.

"You don't know that."

"She coughed her cooties on me."

The next day, my husband drove me to the doctor. I was dressed in my red-striped pajama pants and a T-shirt that read DESIRE. Not wanting to spray my cooties onto others, I wrapped a scarf around my mouth and neck. "Why couldn't she have covered her mouth when she coughed?" I moaned into my scarf.

My husband dropped me off in front of the medical building. Good. I have the elevator all to myself, I thought, and I pressed the CLOSE button on the elevator panel — the doors inches away from lockdown. A four-legged metal walker rammed through the doors. The apparatus wrestled its way inside. "Thank you, dear," said the little old lady at the end of the walker.

Each time the elevator's doors went to close, someone's arm or cane reached in and halted the doors from closing. Inside the elevator choked with people, I was suddenly nose-to-nose with the little old lady.

"You're certainly bundled up," she said.

"I have this cough. I can't get rid of ... "

Shielding herself with her cane, the little old lady took quick, short steps backward. She maneuvered herself through the swell of people until she reached the elevator's panel. She continuously pressed down hard on the elevator's button as if she were squishing a bug — a cootie bug.

To find out more about Mimi Kopulos and read her past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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