A Love Story

When I was 19 years old I spent a month of my life working in Kodiak, Alaska. I will tell you right now that this is indeed a story about love. In order to get to the love part I will spare you the fish gutting, shower less, 16 hour work day cannery tales, and skip to the Anchorage airport where this story takes place. Unfortunately for me I was fated with an 8 hour delay the day I left Alaska. After about 3 hours of airport laps, I decided I had seen all the Alaska socks and "Some one in Alaska loves me" tee shirts I could stand. I made my move to the Horizon airline gate, where the rest of the story takes place. At the gate I was sitting in a nest of my things (by "nest" I mean my stuff strewn around my seat) reflecting on the past month. I was the only one at the gate at the moment, after an hour passengers slowly started to trickle in. One of the passengers was a little boy, 3 maybe 4 ish. Maybe it was my nest of bags, or the lack of beard I had (the beards flow like water in Alaska by the way) but for some reason this boy decided to chat with me (oh and by the way, he had parents with him, but they aren't important to the story). Ok, so skip the part where we say hello, and I make a joke about thinking he's 50 years old or something. Skip to the part where the little boy asks me "what my favorite holiday is." I tell him, "Thanksgiving, because I love to spend time with my family, and I love to eat" a friendly feel good answer. I find this conversation amusing after walking in the airport for 3 hours, so I retort the question "what's your favorite holiday?" Now this is the part of the story where this particular story pertains to this particular day. The little boy paused to think, then looked at me and said,
"Valentine's Day, because Valentine's Day is the holiday of love, and I love to love."