This story has everything: teenagers, a police investigation, and cannibalism.
See, a California teen baked her late grandfather’s ashes into sugar cookies.
She then brought these cookies to school and handed them out for classmates to eat.
Someone is believed to have baked her own grandfather’s ashes into sugar cookies.
That someone was a female high school student at Da Vinci Charter Academy, a public charter school in California.
Because she is a minor, she has remained unidentified — which is good.
What is not so good is that she brought the sugar cookies in to school and handed them out to at least nine other students.
Some of the students are said to have eaten the cookies unaware of what they contained.
But some of the students apparently knew exactly what they were getting.
Davis Police Lt. Paul Doroshov confirmed that the unorthodox ingredient wasn’t a shock to all of the students.
“Some students knew beforehand and still consumed the cookies,” Doroshov confirmed to the L.A. Times.
Some who heard this story of course wondered if the cookies genuinely contained human remains, or it if was some prank.
When asked if the claim was credible, Doroshov reportedly sighed.
“Yeah,” he affirmed.
Curiously, apparently another female student was involved in bringing the cookies to school.
it’s unclear why she was involved, as the two young women are not related.
Regardless, police were at a loss to categorize what happened as a crime.
Some considered a California law regarding the improper disposal of remains.
Others suggested that some sort of public nuisance charge would be more appropriate.
Ultimately, it appears that no real harm was done and that this was the result of juvenile impulsiveness.
In light of that, police have reportedly left it up to the school to figure out how to respond to something like this happening.
As weird as this sounds to all of us, a lot of adolescent behavior is incomprehensible to adults.
The brain is still maturing and hormones are more or less in charge.
Still, multiple people have heard this story and openly wondered whatever happened to baking marijuana into food “like a normal person.”
One of the students who ate one of these yikes-worthy cookies (just in time for Halloween, no less) spoke about the experience.
He said that the cookies had visible gray flakes within them.
Apparently the act of eating the cookies reminded him of chewing on sand as a child at the beach.
He described being able to feel granules crunching against his molars.
Our only response to that is to say, in contemporary internet parlance: Thanks, I hate it!
In a letter to parents, Da Vinci Charter Academy Principal Tyler Millsap addressed the issue.
“This issue going on right now has been particularly challenging and our staff has responded appropriately,” he wrote.
He praised staff for responding “in the most respectful and dignified way possible for all the students and families involved.”
“I can say that those who were involved are remorseful,” he confirmed.
“And,” he concluded. “This is now a personal family matter and we want to respect the privacy of the families involved.”
He also pointed out that there is fortunately no health risk.
This sort of thing should not happen again. You can make seasonal cookies in October without including cremated remains.
In part, it’s about consent — people should know what they’re eating.
In part, it’s about respect for the dead and for her own family.
We know that, for centuries, powder made from Egyptian mummies was regularly consumed all across Europe as a “medicine.”
That does not mean that it was good for anyone or that it should happen again.