It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Girl Scout Cookie season.

The Girl Scout Cookie boxes always have these obscenely happy little girls and slightly deranged looking troop leaders doing the most wonderful and adventurous things like rappelling from towers and gymnastics and riding horses. For some reason, that sends me back to the bowels of my childhood. I was a latch key kid - remember those? This one time, I saved up my lunch money and used it to buy a box of Thin Mints. All the way home from the bus stop I thought about those cookies until I could hear the crinkling of the wrapper and smell their minty deliciousness. Most afternoons I alternated between after school specials, Donahue and running out of the house scared shitless that Church, the stupid cat from Pet Cemetery, was hiding in the afternoon shadows. That day, I poured a glass of milk, sat down at the dining room table, took the Thin Mints out of my bookbag and ate the entire box all the while studying the girls on the box and reading their little blurbs about how happy they were to be Girl Scouts . I remember feeling like my life was like a box of girl scout cookies (sorry, Forrest, I thought of it FIRST and I want royalties) Everyone else was out there having fun, swinging fire hoses around and whatnot and I was stuck inside, stuffing my face with the proceeds. Oh, how desperately I wanted to be a Girl Scout. Then I got sick and ate an entire bottle of multi-flavored TUMS, but that's another story.

My most favorite cousin, PTCakes (Holla) brought me over three boxes of Girl Scout Cookies today. Caramel D-Lites (formerly known as Samoas), Peanut Butter and, of course, Thin Mints. I was looking at the box and chuckling to myself, remembering that crappy feeling of being on the outside looking in that pretty much sums up my childhood. That wasn't the funny part. The funny part was, my Ya-Ya was a girl scout. One of my best friends, OHM, was her troop leader. There are lots of pictures of everyone doing fun things and smiling and laughing, and I'm even in some of them so I remember that just before the posed picture, real life was going on with all it's catfights and boredom and aggravation. (Don't get me wrong - Girl Scouts with OHM was great fun. When she was forced to give up her position by the nagging need for a job that provided benefits, Girl Scouts just wasn't the same. We quit.) I realized that there is no outside looking in, it's all a matter of perspective. And given the choice, I'd rather be where the Thin Mints are. Yum.