That’s me, in the Cookie Monster onesie, dragging the wagon full of Thin Mints and Caramel DeLites up a hill.
That’s also me, in the chocolate chip cookie costume, balancing a box of Adventurefuls on my head.
And that’s my daughter, in her Girl Scout vest (please don’t look too closely — a numeral fell off, so her troop number is off by several thousand), faintly stalking as we stick flyers in mailboxes and make home deliveries and rejoice when someone finally says, “Why yes! I’ll take two boxes of Peanut Butter Patties and two Toast-Yays!”
You, good citizens, see us and our ilk behind card tables outside your local Ralphs and Trader Joe’s and Pavilions. There we are, the sugar pushers, at your front doors. There we are, the carb evangelists, on your social media feeds.
Perhaps you’ve already purchased cookies from your granddaughter. Perhaps you’re diabetic and cannot survive being left alone with an entire box of Thin Mints. So you don’t answer the door, or you scroll past our QR code, or you look awkwardly at your feet to avoid our pathetic, pleading smiles as you enter and exit the grocery store.
I am here to tell you what it feels like from the other side. I am here to tell you how much money the Girl Scouts make from cookie sales. I am here to tell you that this sugar-fueled engine has powered the mighty machine that helped mold Janet Reno and Sally Ride, Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright, Sandra Day O’Connor and Condoleezza Rice, Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton, as well as a positively alarming number of singers, actors and journalists.
All were once Girl Scouts.
Preparing for life
The cookie program helps prepare girls for Real Life, they say. Consider what happened to my colleague Samantha Gowen and her wide-eyed 11-year-old at a booth at the Army-Navy store in Old Towne Orange.
A diehard animal lover stopped dead center at their 8-foot cookie table, lecturing them about the horrors of the American slaughterhouse. Gowen…
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