Dear Kid,

It’s National Coffee Day.

By all rights, the banks should be closed, all offices and schools should be off, and tickertape parades should be held in celebration.

Wait. Cancel the tickertape and confetti. That might get in the coffee. Eww.

Birds are singing. Lattes are being poured. And all over the world, people are gradually becoming sufficiently caffeinated.

Happy sigh.

You already know my most important thoughts about coffee: Make good coffee. Drink it. Be human.

National Coffee Day DearKidLoveMom.comAnd you know that the Cincinnati Coffee Festival is coming to Cincinnati November 11 and 12, 2017 (shameless plug).

But did you know:

Coffee was the first food to be freeze dried. And yes, it’s a food.

The largest “cup” of coffee ever brewed was 3,700 gallons. That’s a lot of coffee.

You know the wonderful scent of a freshly opened bag of coffee? It might be fake scent. Some companies (include Dunkin and Stbx) use faux coffee smells to convince you to come in, stay longer, spend more. And that same technology is often injected into bags of coffee to, um, “enhance” your bag opening experience. (And I don’t care. I love the smell of a freshly opened bag of coffee.)

In England in the 17th century, women were forbidden to drink coffee in public. Who’s sipping now, huh?

A tall Starbucks coffee has about 7.6 times the caffeine of a can of Coke and more caffeine than a 12-ounce can of Red Bull. Go easy, young grasshopper.

Coffee grounds are environmentally friendly slug repellant.

A third of the tap water Americans drink is consumed after it makes a trip through the coffee pot and becomes liquid gold (by which I mean coffee). But the liquid gold euphemism works, because coffee is second only to oil in being the top traded commodity.

Johann Sebastian Bach wrote a cantata inspired by coffee addiction. Ahhh, Bach. (Serious extra points if you get that one.)

The oldest cat ever was Creme Puff, who lived to be 38 years old and died in 2005. The owner fed her coffee, bacon, eggs, and broccoli every morning. This is not a recommended diet for cats. Or people. Or turtles. (Have you ever seen a turtle drink coffee?)

Happy National Coffee Day.

Love, Mom

For those extra-devout among us, Radar O’Reilly said, “Ahhh, Bach” on M*A*S*H. Great episode (weren’t they all).