Have you ever been stuck in a meeting or class and just wished you could have a little bite — or a lick — of some cheese without anyone knowing?
Well, a 9-year-old girl from Missouri came up with a fix for that and decided to fill an empty lip balm tube with slices of sharp cheddar cheese.
On Tuesday night, the girl's mother, Valerie Schremp Hahn, a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, posted a photo of her daughter's genius creation to Twitter, garnering praise for the fourth-grader who told BuzzFeed News she got the idea from YouTube.
My 9-year-old daughter has taken an old lip balm tube and filled it with cheese so she can eat it in class.
"I was just looking on YouTube because I was bored and I found this video and I decided to do it," the girl, whose mother asked that her name not be published, said. "I just took some of my dad’s cheese, sliced it up, and put it in the chapstick container."
The idea was part of a compilation of back-to-school pranks on sneaking food into class from Troom Troom, a DIY life hacks channel. In the video, they use an empty glue stick container but the Schremp Hahn household didn't have any of those laying around, so the young inventor picked the next best thing.
"I just found that, cleaned it out with some soap, and started filling it with cheese," the fourth-grader said. She used sharp cheddar from Aldi's.
On Wednesday, she brought two what she is calling "cheese stick chapsticks" to school and took a few licks and bites during breaks between standardized tests.
"You can lick it and no one will know," she said.
Her friends got a kick out of it.
"At first I didn't tell them and I was like licking the, quote, 'cheese,' and then I told them it was cheese and they just started laughing so hard," the fourth-grader said.
People on Twitter loved it, too, with some calling Schremp Hahn's daughter a genius.
@valeriehahn Your daughter is living in 2079 and we are all still here in 2019.
@notthegymnast @valeriehahn Burt’s Bries™️
@valeriehahn My sides and face hurt from laughing. I am also ashamed because I never thought of this.
Balm: Anything that heals, soothes, or mitigates pain. https://t.co/cjNqbWqJXn https://t.co/1d0ZRnCeJB
"I’m just impressed that anybody would, like, like this out of all things," the 9-year-old said. Still, she understands why some people might be obsessed with the idea.
"Cheese is amazing," she added.
Schremp Hahn told BuzzFeed News her daughter's teacher didn't notice the two tubes of cheese during class but got her message about it and thought it was hilarious. The school's principal was also impressed and told Schremp Hahn she would give her daughter a shoutout in the school's newsletter.
"I was kind of surprised it took off, but people like cheese so, you know, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised," Schremp Hahn said.