Rainbow: Loves helping Girl Scouts

Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.

My 4-year-old doesn't like girls.

I'm not sure how this happened, and I'm working on it, I promise you. But in the meantime, he's a horrible misogynist. He was even rude to the princesses at Disney World. "I just don't like girls .

". except for Nora."

Nora's a fifth-grader who lives down the street.

"Nora isn't mean to me," he says.

"And Nora sells Girl Scout Cookies."

He's got a point — it's impossible not to like someone who sells Girl Scout cookies.

I actually get excited when the first Girl Scout of the year shows up at our door. (This year it was Nora.) And not even because I'm much of a cookie person .

I'm just excited that it's a Girl Scout. And not some other good-intentioned kid selling something I have absolutely no use for.

Like wrapping paper. Or raffle tickets. Or large, strange-tasting candy bars. Or verrrry expensive popcorn.

If you come to my door selling any of the aforementioned stuff/junk, and you are under the age of 12 — I will buy some from you.

Because you are a kid.

And because I don't want you to experience the humiliation of door-to-door rejection. At least not at my door.

And also, I really do want to help your school build a new playground, and I want your dance team to get to Orlando. And I approve of just about anything that keeps you happy and busy and doing something useful. I would chip in $3 to $5 toward happy/busy/useful pretty much every day of the week.

But, oh man, I don't want to buy any of the stuff that you're selling.

I don't want to look at catalogues. I don't want to have to choose between 10 things I don't really want. (Spices! Salsas! Scented candles!) And I really don't want you to have to come back later, probably when I'm not home, to deliver it all . . .

I suspect that you and your parents know this. Because when I'm the parent, and I'm standing behind the kid trying to sell a $20 bag of popcorn, I feel like apologizing to every person who says yes.

"I know you're just doing this because my son looks ridiculously cute in his Cub Scout uniform. His hat is too big. He just lost his two front teeth. It's like we stole him from a Norman Rockwell painting. It isn't fair, and I'm sorry, and I'll see you next year. Enjoy that cheese popcorn!"

The Girl Scouts directly benefit from my frustration with every fundraiser. By the time they show up in January, with their affordable boxes of delicious cookies that you can't buy anywhere else or at any other time of year . . .

When they show up with their Thin Mints and their Peanut Butter Patties and their Lemonades (good heavens, their Lemonades) .

I just want to hug them.

I don't. Hug them. But I do get out my checkbook, and I'm very quickly saying something like, "What's 18 times $3.50?" or "Yes, but how many boxes of Caramel deLites do we need?"

It isn't fair, really .

It isn't the Boy Scouts' fault that their organization didn't come up with something as ingenious as Girl Scout cookies 80 years ago.

(Though wouldn't it be great if they had? If there were some sort of Boy Scout salt water taffy or banana bread that you could look forward to all year?)

It isn't fair that little girls' first experience with sales is a confidence-building, "Hooray! Girl Scout cookies!"

And little boys' first experience is, "That microwave popcorn costs how much again?"

Not to pick on the Boy Scouts. I'm only talking about them because my own son has hawked popcorn. People tend to like the Boy Scouts, so the stuff sells despite the price tag — and despite the fact that it's just popcorn.

But it always makes me think about how much better the boys could do if they had a more desirable product .

Maybe the Boy Scouts should just buy a lot of Girl Scout cookies and hold on to them for six months — they'll keep — and people would easily pay $4.50 for a box of Thin Mints in July . . .

I know where we could get the cookies. There's this really nice girl named Nora . . .

« Living

Share