On My Honor, I Will Try to Not Eat So Many Girl Scout Cookies
Getting in touch with one's inner Cookie Monster.
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EmailFor years, the Girl Scouts and I have been nurturing a love/hate relationship, and now, once again, the Girl Scout cookies have arrived. Thank God. After all, I’ve only had a few days to rest since the Valentine’s Day candy feeding frenzy. And, of course, there’s the Easter holiday looming on the horizon.
Every year, I can’t resist a Girl Scout when she comes to my door with her order forms clutched firmly in her little hand and asks, “Please ma’am, won’t you please buy some delicious cookies from me?”
I quickly glance at the order form and wrack my brain in an attempt to figure out which cookies on the list I am least likely to devour in a matter of seconds. After I “X” all of my supposed “non-favorites,” I hand her back the form.
The young cookie entrepreneur stares at my X’s. “Just two boxes?” she questions.
“Well, I ordered from other Girl Scouts also,” I reply nervously.
She passes the order form back to me. “How about a few more boxes that you can give to all your friends?”
I sigh as I sign up for more cookies than I can eat in an entire year. I now know that until the cookies arrive in a few weeks, I will be working diligently on taking off five pounds—in preparation for the ten I will surely gain from Girl Scout cookie consumption.
“Thanks lady!” she yells as she runs to the house of the next sucker in my neighborhood.
A few weeks later, I haul in the forty-nine boxes of cookies from my front porch that various Girl Scout troop mothers have dropped off in the last few days. In a matter of minutes, my kitchen counters are stacked with box after box of Thin Mints, Shortbreads, and Peanut Butter Sandwich cookies.
I stand back and survey the situation. I pick up a box of Peanut Butter Sandwich cookies and read one side of the box that says, “Courage, Confidence, Character.” “That’s nice,” I think to myself as I slowly eat a row of cookies. As I chew the last cookie, I turn the box over to read the other side. I gasp loudly, “Good gravy! I’ve just inhaled 1,600 empty calories in less than three minutes!”
I rotate the box and stare at the photograph on the front. Three very happy little girls are looking at an owl and its handler, seemingly enjoying his speech on what owls eat and what they watch on television. I pick up a box of Thin Mints and see a picture of a group of young girls who are hanging off a rope ladder in mid-air, arms around each other, obviously sharing unforgettable camaraderie. I hold the box up in front of my face and shout, “I’m doing this for you, girls…all for you!” as I shove three Thin Mints in my mouth at once. “Try this trick at your next overnight camping trip!” I yell as cookie crumbs fly out of my mouth and all over the box. “It’ll make singing Kum Ba Yah around the campfire seem really, really boring!”
And that is where my husband found me a few hours later, with cookie boxes haphazardly torn open and strewn about the floor. My body was draped over the counter and I was laughing hysterically. He looked horrified. “Honey,” he said quietly, “You have a chocolate mustache and peanut butter smeared all over your good work blouse.”
“Do you have any insulin?” I asked just before I fell into a sugar-induced coma that lasted several hours.
The Girl Scout motto is “Always Be Prepared.” My new aphorism is “Never Answer the Door when a Girl Scout is Ringing the Doorbell.”
I’m already feeling better. I think I’ll have a cookie to celebrate.
Vicky DeCoster
Author of "The Wacky World of Womanhood" and "Husbands, Hot Flashes, and All That Hullabaloo!" Visit her web site at www.wackywomanhood.com