I'm gonna preface this by saying that I love Sage Steele. She's black and cool and smart and elegant. These are all good things, things everyone should strive to be. But.
Today is April Fool's (Fools? Fools'?) Day. For the young and the childless, like myself, this is a day to not use Google, to not react to distressed calls for help for any reason, and to decide which friends you should never speak to again. But.
For parents like Sage Steele, mother of three, this is a day of pranks, of banter, and most vitally, of bonding. This is a day to show your kid that you were a kid once, too, some decades ago, and that you remember how to react to jokes and perhaps even how to dole out jokes of your own. Which brings us to the following.
On its face, this prank is Fine and, if you're into fucking with other people's food, funny! But if you stop to think about it, this harmless joke quickly transfigures into something downright sinister. Here is my line of thinking:
1. If Steele is still making her Lil' Steeles lunch and packing Oreos, then this means they're relatively young.
2. If her kids are young, then their bodies and brains are still developing.
3. And so, they need sustenance. They need calories, both to grow and to acquire knowledge via a long, grueling day of school.
Now I'm just supposing here, but I believe the best-case scenario for this joke, from Steele's perspective, is that each of her children takes a bite of an Oreo, gets a mouthful of Colgate, spits the cookie out, and throws the second cookie away. I don't know if Steele accounted for this loss of sustenance by, say, adding an extra piece of bologna to their sandwiches or whatever. I don't know. But.
If she didn't, could this be a case of child neglect? HMMMMM, just asking questions.
And then I got to thinking. Steele is a woman who has carved out a great career in what is largely a boys club. Steele likely has GRIT. What if her kids also possess the same spirit? What if they're soldiers, like Mom, and just power through the toothpaste and eat the Oreos? What if they were born without tastebuds? What happens then?
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS:
Her kids will probably be aight. They'll probably be aight. But.
Don't prank people on April Fool's Day. Don't feed your kids toothpaste. And for fuck's sake, don't try to give your kids heat stroke:
#DadBurn, indeed.
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