The times, they are a-changing

In second grade, I became a Brownie. I have no memory of the decision behind this, but I’d guess that my mom signed me up so I wouldn’t be the only girl in my class not doing it. I can’t imagine that anything about it actually appealed to me—or to her—but it was the thing to do at that point, so we did it. My fondest memory from the experience was getting a really nice picture taken in my uniform; back then, in my free-time, you’d generally find me barefoot, with hair tousled by branches and briars from whatever outdoor pursuit I’d spent my day undertaking, so being captured in a photograph with such brushed, perfectly placed hair and a pretty smile was an exciting twist in my life. (I was cute, but I had a post-hippie-era mom; I was not fussy about my looks!)

That portrait, though, was about all I liked about the experience. I definitely did not enjoy the selling of cookies, which as Brownies, we did have to do (I think it was part of the initiation into Girl Scoutdom—a telling test of whether we could cut it in the green uniform). For a kid who was terrified by the prospect of talking to strangers (even if she had no trouble talking the ear off of people she knew), the idea of going door to door in my neighborhood and asking people to buy from me was not appealing. Thus I didn’t do it. I simply asked the handful of neighbors I knew and came back home.

Since this tallied to about eight boxes, I faced a problem. But back then, people didn’t take their little girls into their offices to sell cookies. My dad didn’t have employees who, like I would twenty years later, felt obligated to purchase three or four boxes from every Girl Scout who showed up at work in the late months of winter. My dad was, in fact, a professor, and I can assure you that the physics department did not contain many Brownie-friendly faculty. And back then, my mom was busy being a potter and a community activist, neither of which lent her sugar-hungry or kid-friendly colleagues. Thus I was left with the fewest entries on my order form in the entire troupe, and thus I quit. I’ve never regretted the decision, and I hold no hard feelings toward the Girl Scout enterprise.

I do, in fact, love the Girl Scouts, if solely for the sake of the cookies. Really, what in life compares to a freezer-chilled Thin Mint, eaten after a bowl of chili at home with friends or crumbled into a bowl of ice cream during a movie? I say, not much. Thin Mints are one of life’s little pleasures, and it’s always a treat to get to buy them once again. But boy, things have changed on the sales end of those cookies. I went the grocery store this morning, and two girls positively bounced up and down on their toes behind the card table out front that they had covered with all varieties of Girl Scout cookies. Mind you, their excitement related to some puppy, not to the approaching customers who were in fact trying to get their attention so we could each buy a couple of boxes. When finally a Girl Scout attended to me, I handed her a twenty, which elicited from her a set of squinting eyes and an up-tilted head. It had taken her a good thirty seconds to deduce that two boxes at $3.50 equal $7; clearly, coming up with change was going to be a challenge. So I told her the answer, and she frowned further. “Really?” she asked me. “Yes,” I said, doing my best not to say anything more. I swear, if they’re gonna make it this easy for these kids to sell the things (they didn’t even have on their uniforms!), they could at least use the process as an opportunity for a math lesson. But I went easy on her, because she had, in fact, convinced the woman next to me to give me the last box of Thin Mints.

As we walked away, I thanked this woman again, and she smiled and assured me it was no problem. She already had ten boxes at home, she explained, and she knew these girls’ mothers, so she was just buying more boxes to help them out—it didn’t matter to her which kinds she bought. This, I thought, this was the kind of mom I needed to know back in the day! Not to mention the next mom I saw. This one was unloading the car next to mine, and as she stepped away, with three cases of Thin Mints tucked under her arm, I asked if I could buy a few. She told me to meet her at her family’s table, which was all of six feet from the first one I’d bought at, and as I stood there, cash in hand, I witnessed an argument among five mothers and one father. Apparently, the first set had signed up to table until noon and the second set was early for the next selling period. But since they had Thin Mints and the others didn’t, they worked out a deal by which they could sell just those until their noon start time. Mind you, there were no children present for this discussion; the Thin-Mint-laden lady came with her husband but no Girl Scout. The eight year old inside me felt appalled.

But I still bought two boxes from her. I couldn’t help myself. Girls Scouts these days may have it shockingly easy, but give ‘em all a badge anyway. Those cookies are too good to pass up.