America 101: #32 Girl Scout Cookies
by awindram
"Can't wait for the Millennium."
"Me too. I'll be 21 then."
"Awesome!"
What are they?
Depending on your point of view: girl scout cookies are shitty, overpriced baked goods pushed by female midgets on street corners, or girl scout cookies are baked crack pushed by female midgets on street corners – and Jesus knows you’ll do anything for that next Thin Mint hit.
Why would female midgets be pushing drugs on street corners?
Times are tough, Papa’s got to have some spending money.
More seriously?
As far as I can ascertain, it’s a sort of girl scout version of the old bob-a-job week that the boy scouts used to do, only instead of sending out prepubescent boys in shorts to do jobs unsupervised around the home and garden of the friendly, neighborhood pederast, the girls are encouraged to stand around on the street haranguing passersby to try their delicious cookies.
They really do that?
No, but their mothers do. Parents will stand outside supermarkets trying to shift boxes of the stuff or else they’ll take them into the office in an effort to get pity sales off their colleagues. The girl guides do nothing other than count all the green that their parents bring in.
Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?
Yes, yes it does.
That didn’t happen in my day.
Nor mine. My parents didn’t go round to that pederast’s house to clean his car. No, I did it all on my own, and how else was I to learn about independence?
Do they at least make the cookies themselves?
No, that would be ridiculous – as well as charming. The cookies are not home-made, this is a big operation, they are shiped direct from the source – a meth-house in the Sonoran Desert. This meth-house churns out 200 million boxes of the stuff each year.
So what do you get for your money?
You can take your pick of Thin Mints, Peanut Butter Patties, Shortbread, and Caramel deLites (formerly called Samoas until the girl scouts changed the name for being a bit racist. Americans love using cookies to make race analogies. See: Oreo). They come packaged in a cardboard box, each variety coming with its own painfully dull photograph.
Bit harsh, they are just girl scouts.
Are?! Look at the photo above. It looks like it’s from 1992! I’d wager I’m younger than all of those girls. In fact, at this precise moment one of them is probably hanging outside a branch of Krogers in Tennessee selling girl scout cookies on behalf of her own daughter to some cookie junkie trying to score one more hit. Of course, she hates it each time she gets a sale. She knows that means she has to reach into her box where she keeps all the merchandise, and what’s waiting for her there? Box upon box of Peanut Butter Patties, that’s what. Each one reflecting back at her a portrait of herself in better times. It kills her a little inside whenever she hands over a box of the Peanut Butter Patties, life didn’t turn out as she’d hoped, she’s grown to hate that young, optimistic version of her smiling on box. She hates her for her naiveté, but she keeps on going, she does what she has to do, she keeps strong, and she keeps on pushing box after box of those damn Peanut Butter Patties.
Most important question, are the cookies any good?
I don’t think so.
But you are a miserable git, aren’t you?
So I’m told.
Whatevs, Tagalongs are delicious. Do girl scouts in the UK sell “biscuits?” Or do they stick to providing the masses with Spotted Dick?
Tagalongs? Sounds like the name of a shitty child-friendly rapper.
“Yo, stay in school. Respect! And respect yo teachers too. Word!”
no, we don’t sell biscuits, we go rock climbing and abseiling and rifle shooting and bowling, we go camping and we have campfires and we fundraise through events and marshalling and sales of old clothes and things like that. I don’t get american girlscouts, they’re such a let down
They must have changed selling strategies. In 1982, I had to sell those cookies door to door. All the work was my own. One delightful old woman even yelled at me for ringing her door bell as I hadn’t observed her “no solicitors” sign. I was eight and I had no idea what a “solicitor” was.
No cookies being pushes over here in England. Just pensioners selling red poppies for war remembrance and now daffodils for something else (hospices or cancer, perhaps?).
I always sold the least of my troop, because my parents wouldn’t go out selling for me like everyone else’s. I therefore had no shot at winning a super-cool prize, like a glow-in-the-dark T-shirt or a fancy tape deck
I have to say, most of them are really tasty but when the husband comes home from work with 8 boxes (sold by parents, as you say) they start to wear a bit thin.
I remember when I was first offered them, asking what kinds they had – people were amazed that I didn’t know the different flavours. Like you, I sort of expected them to be home baked too, not manufactured. They are really key to American culture though, Did you know there is even an iPhone app that tells you where to find them?
they’re NOT GOOD?????
you’re crazy.
I’ve seen some very industrious girls selling the cookies themselves, and those are the only cookies I’ll buy, because for the most part they are just overpriced.
But… the minty chocolate ones? I just can’t get over them. They are addictive.
I respect your opinion, entirely regardless of whether you may or may not be a miserable git. it’s interesting to see your reaction to this phenomenon. I rather like the cookies myself, but I find (as I reflect on it now) it’s a fond memory of their yearly coming encouraged through generations. Anywho, I do agree with you’re street corner metaphor, they are always pushing for you to get just one. Good piece man.