Epic Win: Origami Fortune Telling
Submitted and written by Kacie H
Who doesn’t remember making this fortune telling game out of a sheet of paper? After folding the paper, you decorate the outside squares with colors, then the inside flaps with numbers or words. Open the innermost flaps and write the fortunes on each flap. Then your friend chooses one of the four colors. You spell that color out, while moving the fortune teller in and out. Then your friend chooses one of the numbers that is showing. You move the fortune teller in and out the number of times according to the number they chose. When you finish, your friend chooses one of the four visible numbers, and you open the flap under that number to read their fortune.
It was especially useful for finding out which boy in your 6th grade class you were going to marry – and the friend who made it was always nice enough to put a couple nerds in there.
Wow.
I remember this from like grade 7 and 8.
I could never make the damn things though.
I disagree. I never understood those things.
Sorry, nothing will ever compare to the Holy Grail. All WINS will be mediocre by comparison from now on.
I remember calling them cootie catchers. And they are indeed awesome. I still make them today, when I’m bored and have a piece of paper lying around.
I called them cootie catchers, too…..and my girls and I had them down to a science. Something inside me still tells me that they were rigged most of the time…lolol! Still something that I would love to see make a comeback.
it has indeed made a comeback, we of the current 6th gade are making these every day!
6th grade? We’re still making them in 9th grade! Lol I love making these! I remember I made one for all of my friends and I made them so it was personalized. (In other words, I put all the people they hated!) Lol XP
The device the girls have is capable of telling the future
They’re called cootie catchers!
WOW! I haven’t seen one of these in ages. I never knew how to make one either.
We called them “cootie catchers” as well; I remember them from 4th & 5th grade. (I recall ours being pretty gender-neutral– both girls and boys made them, and they had the same kinds of silly fortunes.)
Instead of putting fortunes in mine, I would write things like “+4, even:yes, odd:no.” Before the person chooses a color, they would ask a yes or no question. Once they got to the part where they would normally receive a fortune, I would have them pick a random number. Then I would do the simple equation, and if the answer was even, then i would tell them yes. If odd, then no. This way, people couldn’t memorize where the good fortunes were.
It sounds complicated, but I’m not very good at explaining these things. I think it made playing with the fortune tellers much more fun!
i made one just now <3
me too!
My friends and I were morbid: each fortune was a horrible, yet hilarious, death.
Umm these are called chatterboxes. People still make them:) My best bit was licking the paper so you could easily tear it once you had folded an A4 piece of paper into an equlatarel triangle so you got a perfect square!
After that I was stuck.LOL
I made ones that said ‘You smell’, ‘You pass the test with flying colours’ ‘Mary loves you’ etc. on them, just random thoughts which people hardly ever understand.
Where would we be without YouTube? I was thinking about one of these recently and how I had forgotten to make them…*digs out notebook paper* Just the opening and closing of one is therapeutic to me.
There was one in 2nd grade that said “you’re gay” >:
I remember a Calvin and Hobbes strip where he used one of those on Susie.
“You’re a mouth breathing bag of boogers”
XD
we always had our future careers written on the inside, none of which ever came true, unfortunately!
People still do that today so it’s not really a blast from the past…
???? Origami Fortune Telling?
They are totally called Cootie Catchers.
I think OUAW needs to get their facts straight.
Maybe it’s a generational thing? I never heard of cootie catchers (I’m 30). And why have cootie catchers if you’ve had your cootie shots? Of course, I had an old Ouija board to tell fortunes, so we *really* knew what was going to happen.
Now I’m just waiting for one boy in my class to propose to me and for another boy to cure AIDS. It should happen any day now.
It must be generational- I’m 27, and they were always fortune tellers.
I am an elementary teacher and I was going to have my students make these as a tool to memorize definitions, but none of them knew what I was talking about!!
Even after I made one to demonstrate, they still had no idea what they were!! I thought “You guys are making me feel seriously un-cool right now!”
Thanks sooo much for this video and explanation! We’re 20 and trying to avoid revision and we couldn’t remember how to make it, but now we’ve made 3 beautiful fortune tellers! waheeeyyyy!!
In the late 60’s, early 70’s they were cootie catchers. I think when they come back with successive generations, the name changes – or maybe the name is regional. I had trouble remembering how they worked until we made some at work one day! When you get old, it’s those little things from the past that kind of make your day.
Used by 2nd grade girls to torture boys. Also the reason why boys can’t get along with girls until puberty, when the sight of boobs is enough to forgive.
It was the cutest way to ask a girl to the prom I’d ever seen. I know it’s typically a girl thing to make them, but this guy went up to the girl and did the numbers for her, and the fortune flap thing said “will you go to prom with me?”
LOL…Good old times!! me and my cousin use to play with these =D
*making one now @ the office*
good ol’ Cootie Catchers, I used to be the best at making these now I couldnt to save my life…but it was fun while it lasted.
We called these chatterboxes in Australia and EVERYONE knew how to make them. They were always full of insults and knowing primary school kids, arguments would always start about them. I’m 17 and while bored during a study period me and a few friends put together an epic one for old-time’s sake. Teenage insults with childhood fun leads to a good chatterbox
We always called them Cathakoozies. A little variation on the Cootie Catcher name. We’d have nice fortunes, like “you will marry insert name of popular/actor of the time” and bad ones like “you’ll grow warts all over your face”.
Gah! I meant Catchakoozies!! Like Catch-a-koozies.
I don’t know about whether it’s generational and/or regional- I’m 29 and in my mind they’re called “Cootie Catchers” though I don’t remember if that’s what they were called in the late 80’s or if I heard that sometime afterward. Also I lived in California then, if region has anything to do with it.