Second-grade perspective on Valentine's Day

Perhaps you’re not into Valentine’s Day this year. Had enough of the holiday already? Well, I’m told, you really should celebrate.

“It’s, like, special because I think someone died at that time,” said 7-year-old old Autumn Brown of Woodstock.

“All the family should gather and say, ‘Happy Valentine’s Day!’” she said. “And they can have food and a great feast like Thanksgiving.”

I was looking for a fresh perspective on the holiday. I found it among a group of second-graders at Westwood Elementary School in Woodstock.

Brown, you see, has a boyfriend. He gave her a flip-flop necklace “a couple years ago.”

“I’m like, ‘Thank you. That’s so lovely of you,’” she remembered.

If the two of them went on a date for Valentine’s Day, she said she’d let him drive. Though she’d probably have to tell him, “Hey Austin, you’re going to run into a curb.”

“I think we’d take, like, a train ride and see if there’s any baseball games in Chicago,” she said. “We could talk to each other and say, ‘Hey, what should we do for Christmas?’”

Her parents show love when they say things, such as, “Um, honey, can you do the dishes?”

And she shows them love by helping fold clothes and taking the dog for a walk.

“I, like, shovel the driveway so my dad doesn’t have to march through the snow,” she said.

“He can go and take a rest.”

So what is love?

“Love, to me, I think it’s to have friends and love them and not just say, ‘I’m not going to be your friend,’” Brown said. “If you have a new student, ask them questions like, ‘What’s your name? Where do you live? What do you want to play?’ That’s what I think love is.”

Love, to 7-year-old Raleigh Orr, is when his parents help him with his homework. “They help me do my best work,” he said.

Like many of his classmates, 7-year-old Jackson Schumacher said love is all about hugs and kisses. “You just know it in your heart,” he said.

He thinks we celebrate Valentine’s Day because “that was the time that Abraham Lincoln got married.”