The Birds And The Bugs

by John Christmann

“What I wonder,” I say opening another bag of Sweethearts—those little heart-shaped candy precursors to Instant Messaging that are stamped with suggestive phrases like UR HOT, B MINE, and LETS DO LUNCH—“is what kind of genius schedules a celebration of love in the dead of winter?” Although we are warmly engrossed in constructing Valentines cards at the table, we can hear the frigid wind howling outside the kitchen window. “I mean, after all, it’s not really a time of year that makes you think of romance.”

My older son runs a glue stick around the flat side of a hot pink candy heart emblazoned with 4EVER. “That genius was a priest, Dad,” he informs me. “Saint Valentine died on February 14th.”

“Mommy says it’s the day when the Love Birds start to sing,” interjects my daughter. She is methodically signing her name to a card sporting Bart Simpson on a skateboard with a caption that reads:

Roses are Red, Violets are Blue.
Don’t call me, I’ll call you, Man.

My other son is drawing a picture of two cupids on a piece of cardboard, one with an arrow lodged in his backside. “It’s for my teacher,” he says. “Well, I guess it doesn’t really matter what the time of year or what the origin, it’s always nice to celebrate a day of love with your classmates.”

This is what I say, but I can’t help feel somewhat uncomfortable producing scores of Valentines cards under the pretense that I am helping my children declare their love to every kid in their grade. This is affection on a scale I expect would even make purveyors of on-line dating services blush. But I understand that they are only kids and it would not be right to express their feelings to the one or two they might really like at the risk of offending the other forty-nine who they have no intention of marrying, or even bringing home to meet me.

Besides, I think to myself, they are too young to understand the nature of romantic love. I look over at my older son who has been diligently working on a single card for the last half hour.
“Aren’t you making Valentines cards for your classmates?” I ask him.
“Not this year.” he says, methodically overturning a bunch of Sweethearts until he finds one which says URA 10. His brother and sister look up in surprise.

Then, as he reaches for the glue stick he asks, “Dad, did you give girls Valentines cards when you were my age?”
I watch as he sticks the carefully selected candy heart alongside a set of lips which he has drawn and cut from red construction paper. He is clearly putting a lot of energy into this one card, and with his question I am struck hard by the realization that my oldest might be expressing adolescent feelings born of cupid’s newly forged arrows to someone in his class. There is a lump in my throat the size of a Hersey’s Kiss.

“Of course not,” I shoot back in my normal fashion—which is without thinking—“When I was your age all of the girls I knew had cooties.”

My younger son drops his magic marker on the floor and looks at me in alarm. “Cooties?” He says. “What are cooties?”

“Cooties are teeny, tiny, imaginary bug-like thingies that nest beneath your skin in places you can’t see, like the back of your neck or under your hair,” I tell him. “Then they creep about and make you cringe at the thought they might really be there.”

“Do I have cooties, Daddy?” stammers my daughter. She is clearly scared, but now I am obligated to finish this unexpected, if obfuscated primer on the opposite sex.

“No sweetie,” I reassure her. “Cooties are invented by boys who secretly like girls. It works like this: 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 spend all of his energy trying to 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 say. “They burrow into our heads and short circuit our brains and make us act all goofy. Eventually the cooties go into remission, but by then our brains have been completely rewired to experience love. Then we spend the rest of our lives trying to find girls who don’t mind the fact that we have cooties and act really goofy.”

Although he is viciously scratching his scalp, my younger son seems unconcerned. “You mean all boys have cooties?” he asks.
“Yes. Except Brad Pitt and George Clooney. They are pretty much cootie free as far as I can tell.”

My oldest is now writing secretively on his special card. “So if you didn’t like girls because they had cooties, then that means you really liked girls. Right Dad?”

“Well, basically, yes.” I concede.

“And what about you?” I ask nervously, “Do you think girls have cooties?”
“Yes!” his little brother screams barring his hands in front of him to ward away what he doesn’t yet understand. But my oldest laughs and looks me straight in the eye. “Dad, that is by far the dumbest thing I have ever heard.”

But I can already see it is too late. It is in his eyes. Cooties are busy rewiring his brain and before too long he will know full well that Valentines Day has a lot more to do with birds and bees than it does with martyred saints.

“Nice card,” I say, straining to see what he is writing. “Who is it for?”

He looks surprised, like I am the kind of idiot 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.