Dear Kid,

There are people who don’t like bananas (although there aren’t that many of them since bananas are the most consumed fruit in the world). There are puppies who don’t like bananas although Booker isn’t one of them. I had a friend whose dog used to eat banana peels and crayons and poop banana peel rainbows. This is (generally) not a good use of banana peels. So I investigated a little further to see if there are good uses of banana peels, and according to my friend the internet, there are numerous uses for the inside of a banana peel. I think my friend the internet got a little over committed on this topic.

• Rubbing the inside of a banana peel on a mosquito bite (or other bug bite) or on poison ivy will help keep it from itching and getting inflamed. If you rub the inside of a banana peel on a scrape or burn, it will help the pain go away, keep the swelling down, and keep the wound from getting infected. Just my luck to almost never want a banana right after I’ve been stung or burned.
• If you rub the inside of a small piece of banana peel on a wart every night, the potassium can make the wart disappear in one to two weeks. At the moment, I am wart-less, so unable to test this.
• To whiten teeth naturally, rub the inside of a banana peel on your teeth for about two minutes every night. If you gargle with salt water, this will heighten the effect. Expect results in about two weeks. It works because of the effect of the potassium, magnesium, and manganese in the banana peel.
• Rubbing a banana peel on your forehead can help cure a headache. (Imho, this sounds stupid.)
• Bananas and banana peels make great fertilizer (you can compost them, bury them whole, or cut them in small pieces and mix them with garden soil) because of their phosphorous and potassium content. Roses especially like them. This is quite true. It may be the only useful bit in this list.
• Rubbing the inside of a banana peel on houseplant leaves makes the leaves shiny. So does a damp cloth.
• Banana peels also make a good silver polish—just rub silver with the inside of a peel and then buff with a cloth. I just happen to have a piece of silver that needs polishing. So I grabbed the peel from Dad’s breakfast banana to try this. It’s hooey. Just hooey. The plate looks exactly the the same before and after banana peel rubbing. Except for bits of banana which I had to wipe off.

Great Banana Song #3

The Great Banana Peel Summary: Feed your banana peels to the roses or the compost. Otherwise, just leave them on the bananas.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Yesterday when Booker saw the deer he went bananas. Which of course got me thinking about bananas. And being the kind of mom I am, I am going to share some of the weird banana tidbits with you. (You may feel free to thank me later.)

Bananas are naturally radioactive because of their potassium content and the isotope potassium-40. Since you are the chemistry-oriented one, I will not explain this (mostly because I don’t understand it). Since there is not enough radioactivity to upset airport security people, you probably don’t have to worry about eating them.

People eat a lot of bananas.

• Over 100 billion bananas are consumed annually worldwide, making bananas the 4th largest agricultural product in the world (behind wheat, rice, and corn).
• This does not include any bananas eaten by Minions.
• Americans eat 26.2 pounds bananas a year (your father is helping to pull up the average. But not enough because) Ugandans eat 500 pound bananas per year per person. That is A Serious Bunch of bananas.

The banana plant is actually considered an herb and the fruit is a berry. This is crazy confusing because I can’t think of another berry that you peel. (NOTE: strawberries are not considered a berry, but that’s a post for another day.)

Banana plants grow up to 25 feet high, and their leaves can grow to be 9 feet long and 2 feet wide. Their roots can be hundreds of years old.

Great Banana Song #1

Weird Banana Facts

• The scientific name for banana is musa sapientum, which means Fruit of the Wise Men. This has lots of implications for the celebration of Christmas.
• Bananas are a very rich source of vitamin B6, which your brain needs to function properly and make you wise. This has no implications for holidays other than Report Card Day.
• Bananas float in water, as do apples and watermelons. None of them are useful as personal floatation devices.
• Bananas are Walmarts’ best selling item. I have no information about seasonal sales of bananas.
• The word banana comes from an Arab word “banan” meaning finger. An individual banana is called a finger. A bunch of bananas is called a hand.
• Those stringy things are called phloem (pronounced FLOM). Apparently, if you peel a banana from the bottom, you will be phloem-less. I’ve never proven this because I can never remember this trick until I’m mid-banana.
• Bananas first became popular in these here United States at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Celebration, where they were sold wrapped in foil for 10 cents each (which was ridiculously expensive then).
• David Evans Strickler invented the banana split in 1904. He was 23 at the time and understood that there aren’t many foods that don’t improve with a good dose of chocolate.
• Miss Chiquita first appeared on banana labels in 1963 (which was an exceptionally good year for a number of reasons).

Never, ever throw a banana into a beehive. The pheromone that makes bananas taste like bananas makes bees go one level over “highly agitated.” So unless you’re looking for really angry bees, keep the bananas away.
Great Banana Song #2

Tune in tomorrow for Weird Uses for Bananas. I mean, really weird.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Remember Sweethearts candies? They are the small candies (sometimes known as conversation hearts) that were crazy fun when we were little and which taste like chalk that had a lot of sugar mixed in. In my mind, they are synonymous with Valentine’s Day.

Once upon a time in 1847, there were no conversation hearts (more about that tomorrow). Then Daniel Chase figured out a way to use food dye to press tiny little messages onto the candy his brother, Oliver, made. Oliver just happened to be the founder of Necco.

Sweethearts are now available in a variety of assortments to choose from including chocolate, tart, and smoothie flavors.

Sweethearts were probably the forerunner of and inspiration for texting and twitter. They were tiny little messages of under 140 characters. Way under. And you didn’t have a lot of control over the message beyond combing through the box to find just the right phrase for someone.

Over the years, Sweethearts messages have changed to keep up with the times. “Tweet me” was definitely not on candy when I was your age (just a few short years ago). Not only does Necco print messages for you to share at random, you can now also order hearts printed with whatever you want — provided it fits. Although (at least for the box I bought) they are not using dye anymore (which is just wrong).

Valentine candy “conversation hearts” have a shelf life of five years. I prefer not to think about that.

Necco manufactures 8 billion (yup, billion) Sweethearts a year. Which is a lot of talkative candy.

The other big candy for Valentine’s Day is of course chocolate in all its great, glorious, and wonderful forms. If you have any left over, you should feel free to send it to me. I’ll be happy to take care of it for you. Because I’m just that kind of mom.

The phrase “Sweets for the sweet” is a line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act 5, Act 1. The phrase “Sweets for the Mom” is somewhat more recent.

Happy Thursday, sweetie.

Love, Mom

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Dear Kid,

Yesterday I toured a beer brewery.

It was even cooler than it sounds.

Social Media Cincinnati had a gathering. They frequently have Saturday afternoon get-togethers on dates and at times that are particularly inconvenient, so I was very happy that I could get to this one. Also it had been waaaaay too long since I’d seen some of those folks.

The Gathering was at MadTree which you have never been to, partly because I’d never heard of it before this event and partly because you are underage.

But let me back up to tell you about getting there.

Now, there is no one alive who is going to say that I am the best navigator on the planet. I’m not the worst mind you, but if there were an Olympic sport in navigation, I’m quite sure the selection committee would bypass our house without a thought.

Fortunately, I had printed out the directions.

I was driving down I71, paying close attention to the traffic and all traffic laws, when the traffic stopped. And by “stopped” I mean “stopped.” Red lights, not moving, out of nowhere stopped. The car in front of me fishtailed wildly (no, it did not look like fun). I slammed on my brakes.

The good news: I did not hit the car in front of me and the car behind me did not hit me. Big “whew.” The less good news: my purse went flying. And by “flying” I mean crashed to the floor and spilled the contents pretty much everywhere. Guess where the directions were? If you guessed “in your purse” give yourself an extra point.

The good news: I remembered which exit to take. The less good news: I had no idea what to do after that.

When I got off the highway, there was a Home Depot right in front of me. Yippee (I thought to myself) I’ll just pull into the parking lot and grab the directions.

There was a very (very) long red light before I could pull into the HDPL (Home Depot Parking Lot). So I put the car in park and tried to reach for the directions.

Have you ever noticed that I am a short person? With correspondingly short arms? I could not reach the directions while I was buckled in. Even when I made the “ooooo I’m reaching” sound. As it was a very (very, very) long red light, I grabbed the lint roller (in the car to remove Booker fur as necessary). It was just long enough and there was just enough sticky stuff left to grab the paper with the directions.

You’ll be glad to know I got to MadTree, no problem.

There were lots of lovely, fun people there who you don’t know, so I won’t list them out. (Hi, lovely, fun people—it was great seeing you!)

MadTree is not only a taproom (place that sells beer) but a craft brewery. And they gave us a tour (I am a sucker for a fun tour). It was very interesting. MadTree doesn’t bottle their beer, they can it. (Cans are kinder to the beer and to the environment—apparently people are more inclined to recycle cans than they are to recycle bottles.) The canning line is small—it fills four cans at a time, which translates to an amazing 2 cases a minute.

It was all very nice and—you will be glad to know—I made it home without any mishaps.

Hope your day was equally intoxicating (figuratively speaking).

Love, Mom

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Dear Kid,

Last night I went to a Gala Event (and by “gala event” I mean a lot of people in business suits eating good hors d’oeuvres) at the Horseshoe Casino downtown.

The Gala was to celebrate businesses that are among the top 25 in their industry in the area. Since my employer is one of them, I got to go.

Let me just go on record here as saying the Horseshoe is big. Seriously big. Bigger than big. I was somewhat stunned at the bigness.

When you first step off the elevator from the parking garage there are very nice, very large security guards to make sure you are not smuggling in anyone under 21. They did not ask to see my ID. I don’t know that that is a compliment…

I asked one of these very nice gentlemen how to get to the Book of Lists event. “Just walk on back over that way,” he said pointing, “and you’ll see the escalators on your right. Just go right up.”

He neglected to mention that it would be a half mile hike and that I would require frequent stops along the way to ask for directions. Seriously, I had to stop someone and ask directions. I was sure I’d passed the escalators since I’d been walking so far. Nope. But the lady I asked very kindly offered to escort me so I wouldn’t get lost. Which was probably a good thing as we passed several people who may have been sitting in the same place in the casino for several weeks.

At the top of the escalator there was a showgirl in full regalia. And by “full regalia” I mean tiny costume, high heels, and huge headdress. It was lovely, if a little odd since I was later told they don’t have shows at the Horseshoe.

Inside the ballroom, were the aforementioned business suits, hors d’oeuvres, and – wait for it – some of the MadCap Puppets. Have I mentioned lately how much I love those dudes?  The awesome John Lewandowski, Artistic & Executive Director for MadCap, was there too. (Shameless plug for the arts in Cincinnati.)

As I was leaving, I added a quarter mile to the six mile hike to sightsee a little. I went by Bobby’s Burger Palace (sniffs yummy from the outside) which is right next to Starbucks (wouldn’t want to fall asleep at the blackjack tables) and the gift store (in case you want a nice trinket). There are more restaurants in the casino, but I didn’t have compass so I stayed on the well-lit path.

Hope your day stays on a well-lit path. Stay warm, sweetie.

Love, Mom

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Dear Kid,

According to the latest research, teenagers’ bonds with their parents affect their sleep.

Duh.

If you don’t have a good bond with your parents, you’d be up all night worrying about the lack of bond. And that’s a kind of bond Crazy Glue won’t fix.

The research did not discuss the impact of deadlines, finals, study sessions, interesting sporting events, parties down the hall, important phone calls texts from friends, 8 am classes, unexpected fire drills, or snoring roommates on sleeping, so in my opinion it is flawed research at best.

In other news, McDonald’s had an employee website (McResources—seriously) which provided all sorts of “helpful” information to Mickey D’s employees. Like how much to tip au pairs and fitness trainers (um, really? These folks work at McDonalds. Don’t think they can afford a fitness trainer or an au pair.). Recently (as in a few days ago) the site carefully explained to employees that eating fast food wasn’t a particularly healthy choice. Rumor has it that Ronald lost it and so the company pulled down the entire website. Ya’ think?

Happy Thursday.

Love, Mom