Dear Kid,

It’s National Mole Day.

I am a Mole. You're Not. DearKidLoveMom.com

Who is Avogadro?

Not the kind of mole that has Dad doing the Squish-Down-The-Mole-Hole dance in the backyard (although, when you think about it, that might deserve a day of its own too).

This is the mole as in Avogadro’s number (6.02 x 10 ^23).

So we celebrate on 10/23 from 6:02am to 6:02pm. Get it?

A mole is defined as the amount of a chemical substance that contains as many elementary entities (e.g., atoms, molecules, ions, electrons, or photons) as there are atoms in 12 grams of carbon-12 (12C), the isotope of carbon with relative atomic mass 12 by definition. (So says Wikipedia)

Whatever.

More importantly, we celebrate this day in remembrance of the mole project you did in high school in which we had to create a stuffed character mole (hockey. I remember hockey, but I can’t remember the exact name….) and during which we learned to say the phrase, “Is going to be a beetch to sew.” Possibly the first time you heard your mother talk that way, which made it funny as all get out.

It was fun.

It was a bitch to sew.

But we did it together and that made it OK.

And you never forgot Mole Day or Avogadro.

Neither did I.

Love, Mom