“What I wonder,” I say watching my kids make Valentines cards on the kitchen table, “is what kind of genius schedules a celebration of love in the dead of winter?” 

“That genius was a priest, Dad!” my older son informs me as he opens a bag of Sweethearts—those little heart-shaped candy precursors to text messaging stamped with suggestive phrases like UR HOT, B MINE, and LETS DO LUNCH.  “Saint Valentine died on February 14th.”   

Then, after a reflective pause, he reaches for a glue stick and asks, “Dad, did you ever give someone a Valentines card when you were my age?” 

He is in middle school and I am not prepared for his question.    “Of course not,” I shoot back without thinking, “when I was your age girls had cooties.” 

My daughter looks up, startled.  “I have cooties?” she stammers. 

“No sweetie,” I reassure her. “When a boy likes a girl he says she has cooties so that he can pretend he really doesn’t like her.   Then he gets a cootie shot so he can catch the cooties he says he doesn’t want.”

“But Daddy, that’s silly.  Why would boys do that?”

“Because boys really do have cooties.” I explain. “They burrow into our heads and short circuit our brains and make us act all goofy.  Then we spend the rest of our lives trying to find a girl who doesn’t mind the fact that we have cooties and act really goofy.”

My older son scoffs: “Dad, that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.”

I am too late.  Cooties are busy rewiring his brain and he understands that Valentines Day has more to do with birds and bees than it does with martyred saints.  “Nice card,” I say, straining to see what he has written.  “Who is it for?”

He looks surprised, like I am the kind of genius who wonders why romance is celebrated in the middle of February.  “It’s for Mom.” he says. “Who do you think it’s for?”

I smile and flip a candy heart in my mouth.  B TRUE it says.  We still have some time before the Love Birds sing.

The post The Birds and the Bugs appeared first on AKAMom Magazine.