Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
It was shortly after schools shut down during the pandemic in 2020 that I discovered my kids were starving. Not in the charitable giving kind of way, but I found out that despite sending my kids to school with several snacks, lunch and beverage options, surprisingly, they didn’t have enough to eat. I learned this the way many parents learned this: Our kids seemed to ALWAYS need a snack at home. It felt like my life was on an endless 15-minute ask-for-a-snack loop.
“Can I have a snack?”
I became triggered by the word snack. How is it possible that my kids are hungry all of the time? It got to the point that I queried other parents to see if the same thing was happening at their homes, and much to my surprise, yes, it was. Kids were starving across the land (allegedly). I started to hate the word “snack” so much that I tried to find other words for my kids to use to request tiny, between-mean edibles. Nothing quite stuck (can’t have my kids out in the streets asking for edibles), and my eyes would twitch when my kids would slowly make their way toward me because I knew what was coming. I hated the word snack. I’ve heard it too much.
It is now 2024 and the word Popsicle is trying to overtake the word snack as my least favorite in the English language. My kids ask for Popsicles at a relentless clip. And I don’t understand it at all. Sure, everybody loves Popsicles. The frozen treat hits especially hard on a hot summer day. This summer in Washington, D.C., (where I live) is nothing but hot summer days; we’ve been under an excessive heat advisory nearly every day for the past three weeks. My kids are hot, and Popsicles are an easy, flavorful delight.
Except they ask for Popsicles whether they’ve ventured outside or not. My home is fully air-conditioned, and thus not hot, and they still want Popsicles. They want Popsicles with breakfast, and if that doesn’t work, for breakfast. Lunch and dinner are the same. While they’re doing nothing or something, they want Popsicles, and they ask for them around the clock. My youngest wakes up at 7 in the morning and asks for Popsicles and gets upset that he can’t have one. They ask for them before bed. It’s a Popsicle bonanza all day, every day.
My bigger kids, bless their hearts, have tried to be more strategic about it since they noticed their father’s head about to explode when they asked. What’s their strategy? It is to sneak them past me or my wife. As far as they’re concerned, if they don’t ask, they didn’t get one. To them, that means they’re not asking as much so we should be more amenable to dispensing Popsicles when they do ask. Never mind that my wife and I can see and count and thus notice the dwindling number of Popsicles in the freezer even though only my 3-year-old is asking non-stop. Kids think they’re so smart.
I thought it was, maybe, just my house so I asked the other parents in my circle and Popsicles seemed to be the wave this summer. Sure, they’re always the wave during the summer, but there must have been some kid meeting at some point where some council of pint-sized humans who don’t have jobs or responsibilities and still think Crayons are a reasonable writing utensil decided that the summer of 2024 was going to be the Summer of Popsicles.
(No lie, as I’m writing this, one of my kids descended from their playroom on high to ask me for a Popsicle. Egads. He left with two. He doesn’t think I saw it.)
So now, I can’t stand the word. I’m over it. I’m tired of it. I don’t ever want to hear the word again. I don’t have a Popsicle counter, but I’m sure we’ve purchased nearly a million or so since school let out in the middle of June. We’re a month into summer break, and I think my house is keeping the Popsicle industry alive. That means I hear the word “Popsicle” a cool 50-100 times a day, give or take a few dozen or so. My kids wake up with Popsicles on the brain, and they bring those desires right to me and have made it so that I hate the word Popsicle as much, if not more, than snack, which they also continue to ask for at an outrageous clip.
My eye twitches a lot nowadays.
Panama Jackson is a columnist at theGrio and host of the award-winning podcast, “Dear Culture” on theGrio Black Podcast Network. He writes very Black things, drinks very brown liquors, and is pretty fly for a light guy. His biggest accomplishment to date coincides with his Blackest accomplishment to date in that he received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey after she read one of his pieces (biggest) but he didn’t answer the phone because the caller ID said “Unknown” (Blackest).