Valentine's Day is for kids. In my grade school everyone got valentines, because that's just the way things happened. The teacher made sure valentine distributions were fair and democratic. Democracy and love combined, what a concept.

Now, as then, the teacher gives everyone a valentine and maybe puts a valentine sugar cookie with pink icing and red lettering on a paper doily and gives everyone a red construction-paper mailbox. Every kid gets at least one valentine.

Future bean counters count all their loot, and the germinating statisticians try to concoct a mental flow chart of how it all translates into their popularity score or some other value system now, as then.

Cookies and punch and candy hearts and cake are gobbled along with paste and glue and unknown grunge from desks at school parties. A good time is had by all, now as then.

The teacher modeled a behavior called kindness, a lesson not lost. All the kids understood. They did not cogitate or analyze. They intuited. In each little beating heart an idea of what love is sprouted. I had some really good teachers then, as now.

You remember your valentine mailbox. It had white paper paste holding the whole thing together. You fashioned it during art class with frightful concentration, your fat pencil clutched in your chubby fist, sweat dripping from your brow. It was all low brow back then.

The valentines were theoretically all alike, but in truth, each one was slightly different because of the paste and blunted scissors and general artistic bent of each budding artist, each with their own personal scrawled signature.

Now and then, if a special someone in class liked you a bit more than normal, he or she would approach you with a simple hot and heavy grin, because grins are all you can have in the fourth grade. He or she would ask you if you liked the valentine card he or she gave to you, eyes wide with hope.

You would know which one it was when they asked, because they would have signed their card in especially big letters and maybe added extra text like Do you like me? I like you. They may have Elmer's-glued some of those tiny valentine candy hearts that say things like O U Kid or On Fire 4 U somewhere on the card or maybe I Luv U or, worse yet, Kiss Me. They would look deeply into your eyes, expectantly. Sometimes you were thrilled, sometimes rejecting, and sometimes scared.

The best part was that your "valentine" really meant it. He or she was not trying to trick you to get access to your credit cards and bank accounts. They were not pulling the wool over your eyes so they could kiss and tell, extra extra read all about it. This was no butter-up, no racking-up points, no "Carrie at the prom".

Their gushing stubby little selves just felt they loved you to death and hoped you felt the same way too, extra extra read all about it.