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If you are not or never have been a preteen girl, you may never have heard of origami fortune tellers. Maybe it's different now, but when I was a kid, origami fortune tellers were almost the exclusive province of girls.

Kid culture is so strange and insular, I have no recollection of anyone teaching me how to make one. The knowledge seems to have condensed out of thin air, forming in our young brains one day. I just remember that we all made them incessantly. Usually in class when we should have been paying attention to the teacher.

Origami fortune tellers (which Wikipedia informs me are also called "cootie catchers" and "salt cellars") are basically a craft that you use as a game with your friends. You fold your paper in a four-point shape, then write three layers of information on the faces: the first set of choices, the second set of choices, and then the final fortunes.

For example, you might write numbers on the four outer faces, colors on the four inner faces, and then whatever fortunes hidden underneath. You ask your friend to choose a number, move the four sections in a specific way, then ask your friend to choose one of the two colors revealed. You move the four sections again as determined by your friend's second choice, then lift the flap to read their fortune.

Intriguingly, there is a male equivalent of the origami fortune teller: the little paper football which you fold, then flick at your friend's goalpost fingers across the table. I have no idea of the correct way to fold that little paper football, but every guy I've ever asked does.

It's an interesting reflection of both kid culture and gender expectations in our society. It's not that boys can't make origami fortune tellers, or girls can't play paper football. They just… choose not to.

Image courtesy Flickr/docoverachiever