07-071

 

The Way the Cookie Crumbles

 

Yesterday I walked into my office and found a box of Thin Mints on my desk. Beside them sat two boxes of Peanut Butter Patties. A school kid excitement engulfed me. Had it really been a year since the last run of Girl Scout cookies? Ripping into the Peanut Butter Patties, I had an epiphany. There are no Girl Scouts in my office.

 

The mysterious appearance of these cookies made me think. The last time I saw a full-fledged, uniformed Girl Scout was 1984, ironic considering in my life I've spent $61,000 on Girl Scout cookies. The whole cookie thing befuddles me. Who are these people? After all, there are no Girl Scouts. I know. I asked around.

 

The marketing arm behind these cookies is amazing. While the Boy Scouts are sitting around starting fires with sticks and tying rope into 712 different types of knots, the Girl Scouts are building an empire. Any small town Main Street displays evidence of the foot soldiers employed to deliver their goods. Women in minivans double park, dropping off cases of caloric heaven. They move like hummingbirds, making the UPS guy look sloth-like. They convene in convoys at Wal-Mart transporting new shipments of Upside Downs. Which brings us to an all-important question. What the hell is an Upside Down?

 

Girl Scout cookies have invaded all facets of life. This morning I stopped at a Texaco that offered Trefoils for $4.95 plus tax. One can envision what an Upside Down looks like. But a Trefoil? I'm clueless.

 

The official web site GirlScouts.org, states the girls pictured on the cookie boxes are actual Girl Scouts. This is amazing considering these same girls were pictured on the first boxes in....1936. And since "I Love Lucy" was still on the air when the last public sighting of a Girl Scout occurred, we can deduce this web site is, in fact, lying.

 

My brief investigation determined that the Girl Scouts exist solely to sell cookies. It's their only assigned task. Under the "Cookie Section" of the web site an inquisitive parent asks if all girls have to sell cookies, to which the answer is, "Yes! If she doesn't she will be tarred and feathered."

 

But, since we know Girl Scouts do not exist, we can assume no children will be tarred or feathered for failing to sell cookies. However, mothers are required to sell 4,000 boxes of cookies each year to avoid being run over by brainwashed cookie soldiers driving wood-grained minivans.

 

It's also disturbing that the Girl Scouts are the reason behind the increasing number of overweight Americans. For example, each serving of Reduced Fat Cartwheels contains 3,000 calories, with each serving equal to 1/2 of a cookie.

 

I have plenty of things left to say about this topic. However, the cookie crumbs keep causing my computer keys to stick. I'll grab my box of cookies and leave. Soon the convoy will leave Wal-Mart and I'm nearly out of Thin Mints