Whenever we talk about Ohio, I am reminded of an anecdote a student teacher from Massachusetts told me once.
They were supervising a bunch of fifth graders who were making posters in pairs for an American geography project. Every pair had to make a poster about one of the fifty states. The pair that was doing Ohio included a little boy who had just moved from Ohio over the summer. On his poster, he was spending a lot of time coloring in "I Heart Ohio" with a big red Ohio in place of the heart.
His partner was getting upset because she had to do the whole rest of the poster while the Ohio native colored in a big red outline of the state. They were getting increasingly frustrated because "I Ohio Ohio" didn't make any sense. The boy just kept saying "Ohio is a heart," then eventually stopped talking entirely, leaving his partner to do the rest of the poster on her own because he was too preoccupied. She complained to the student teacher, who then suggested to the boy that he take a break coloring in Ohio and work on the the rest of the poster. He threw a small fit and said, forcefully, "Ohio is a heart! It's a heart!", which attracted a lot of attention from neighboring groups who wanted to see what was going on.
None of the east coast fifth graders could comprehend the fact that Ohio is vaguely heart shaped, but several kids latched on to the idea could abstractly stand in for a heart. So they started copying his design for their own posters and produced "I ❤️ Delaware" and "I ❤️ Louisiana" graphics with the shape of Delaware and Louisiana in place of the hearts. As more and more kids saw other kids mimicking this graphic, they started hastily adding the design to their posters too. When the presentations began, it became clear that almost every group had included the design in some capacity.
The Ohio boy was furious and kept saying "it only works for Ohio! Ohio is a heart!" Which prompted other kids to feel the need to explain in all of their presentations that their state, too, represented a heart.
All because only the kid who was actually from Ohio thought the state actually resembled a heart shape and none of the other kids had the comprehension skills to understand what he was actually saying when he insisted that "Ohio is a heart."
I guess it was a travesty and the student teacher had to intervene in almost every presentation because people were fighting about who came up with the idea and why "I Ohio Ohio" was okay but "I Missouri Missouri" was not.