Girl Scout Cookie Season

Those girls. They work so hard. According to a colleague with two girl scout kids, there's so much competition to push these little boxes of happy that some troop leaders actually try gorilla tactics of sabotage, making deals under the table before the official start of selling season, and stabbing other parents in the back for prime real estate. And who could deny the vital importance of the parent's workplace in the fundraising formula?

I was never a girl scout myself, but having the cookies in the house reminds me of my childhood in a different way -- I would be offered, as a treat, a box from my parents, or I would scrape together enough allowance to indulge myself a little with a box of samoas (always my favorite), and squirrel them away under my bed. The sad image of me hunching over to dig one out every so often, eating it on the floor alone while picking at the carpet isn't really my favorite childhood memory, but, looking back, I'm amazed at myself for how long I stretched those babies. I sometimes still had unfinished boxes the next time girl scout cookie season rolled around. (Where did that resolve go? Sweets are so much more precious when you're a child.)

This year, my coworker, a confident, assertive woman with a healthy streak (she steers clear of the 25-plus birthday cakes we help ourselves to every year) sent out an e-mail announcing the start of cookie season, and I went the same day to put in my order. She handed me the brochure with a sigh - she has only so much patience for things like fund-raisers, apparently even for her kids. I stood in her office, drooling over the pictures and agonizing over the fat content of a single thin mint before telling her exactly what I wanted. I hadn't even gotten to samoas yet when she replied in a chipper but slightly cautious tone: 'that's enough.' That's enough. Three boxes is enough. "Oh," I said. A girl scout cookie mom telling me to stop the madness that is my gluttonous free-fall into cookie overload. Yes. Now there's an admonishment you should really listen to. She brought me my cookies the following week, and I must say, I'm slightly disappointed. Have the cookies changed, or have my tastes? All I know is that next year, three boxes will, indeed, be more than enough.