MARK MY WORD: DID LINCOLN EAT PRETZELS? VALENTINES, PRESIDENT STIR CABIN FEVER

You can learn a lot in kindergarten.

It's the kind of class where students can sink their teeth into history. Daughter Becca came home from school the other day with her own log cabin, a milk carton covered with a layer of pretzels cemented into white frosting.

The pretzel cabin was kind of small, even for a mouse. But Becca thought it tasted great.

You might have thought that Becca was suffering from cabin fever. But that wasn't the case. She was learning history -- stuff about President Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War.

She told her mother that the Civil War was a "big war," although when you are 6 it is tough to understand all that war stuff. Becca asked if I was living during the Civil War.

"I may be old, but I'm not that old," I told her.

When you're a kindergartner, age is a strange concept. Anyone older than 10 has been around forever in the minds of these youngsters.

I'm not sure exactly what Becca learned about Lincoln. She was too busy thinking about Valentine's Day to give me a lengthy rundown on the nation's 16th president.

My encyclopedia says Lincoln was one of the truly great men of all time. He'd have to be to have schoolchildren creating all those pretzel houses in his honor.

Of course, Becca would prefer to eat the pretzels rather than use them as building blocks for history.

When you're her age, you live in the present. The past doesn't mean as much as it does to adults.

I was watching a rerun of an episode of the "Hawaii 5-0" television show the other night when Becca came into the room. "Look, this is a show Daddy watched when he was growing up," I told her.

She looked at me with that look of incomprehension that all children display when parents start recalling their own youth. Then, she left the room to go play.

Becca doesn't care that much for television. She would rather play restaurant, pretending to be a waitress and serving imaginary food on her toy plates. I have high hopes that she'll be an actress someday. She already knows how to wait on tables. I suspect 90 percent of an actor's career is spent waiting on tables. You must have something to do between auditions.

At any rate, Becca often takes my order as I sit at her children's table, surrounded by her dolls. The other day I tried to order different kids' meals for the three dolls. But Becca told me that all three of the dolls had to eat the same thing. You have to admire that kind of take-charge attitude in a waitress. Besides, I didn't mind as long as I got my porcupine sandwich.

Valentine's Day is an exciting time for both our daughters. Becca loves the candy and so does Bailey, age 2.

There are Valentine's parties at school and at day care, and cute cards to deliver. Love is in the air, even for 5-year-olds. A friend of mine said her young son already has a girlfriend.

Valentine's Day is special for me, too. Joni and I were married on Valentine's Day 18 years ago.

Of course, that's ancient history to Becca and Bailey. We might as well have been married during the Civil War.

Then, we might have known Lincoln. As journalists, we could have asked him the important questions, like whether he ate pretzels.

Monuments are nice, but only great presidents get pretzel palaces.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.