I don’t want to scare anyone, but it’s here: Girl Scout cookie season. Considering the fact that I am just now able to fit into my jeans after the havoc last year’s cookie season played upon my butt, this is, for me, very bad news indeed.
Usually I don’t have a problem with cookies (my weaknesses run towards all thing fried), but Girl Scout cookies really are a breed apart. For one thing, they’re really, really good; and for another–they’re in my house. Yes, my real problem with Girl Scout cookies is the delivery system: me, which means that all of those cookies that other people have ordered from my daughter, Clementine, have to pass through my house before they can be delivered to their rightful consumers. Hopefully, they will only be visiting my house briefly–milliseconds would be optimal–but if not, if they linger, they run the risk of falling victim to “the opener”.
My son, Clyde, is “the opener”. In a way this is my fault: when I think back to his first few Christmases, and how I laughed and applauded in encouragement every time he managed to pull a single ribbon off of one of his presents, I could easily kill myself. But honestly, who could know then that something he showed so little aptitude for in the beginning would become, in the end, his life’s ultimate passion? But that’s exactly what has happened, and now, Clyde is the Opener. He opens the mail. He opens other people’s presents (especially after I have just finished wrapping them). He opens boxes of spaghetti, bags of charcoal, and tins of loose tea. He also, to my great horror, opens Girl Scout cookies.
Not the Girl Scout cookies I have hidden in the cupboard for my late night Do-Si-Do fix, nor even the ones I have hidden under my desk for my mid-morning Thin Mint inspiration, but rather, (unfortunately), the boxes upon boxes of cookies that are stacked all over the house waiting to be delivered to other people. And not just one or two boxes, but all of them. I’ll never forget how this time last year I came around a corner only to find Clyde sitting on the floor surrounded by a pile of open Tag-a-Long and Lemon Cooler boxes taller than his head. It was not so much knowing that I would have to replace them all that did me in (at three bucks a box I wasn’t too worried about breaking the bank), but knowing that I would now be living in the same house with hundreds of loose cookies.
As everyone knows, a cookie, while still in its unopened box, is mostly harmless. It’s like a grenade that hasn’t had its pin pulled or a bullet that hasn’t been fired. Sure, the potential for harm is there, but for now, and for as long as it remains inviolate, everyone is safe. Open the box, however, and all bets are off. Open twenty boxes, and, well, you might as well plan on spending the rest of the year wearing your husband’s old sweat pants.
Don’t get me wrong: it’s not like I have no self-control; in fact, I have a box of cookies in my cupboard right now that are in no danger whatsoever of my molesting them. Of course, they’re also in no danger of being molested by my husband, the kids, the neighbor’s kids and any stray dogs that might wander through the house–I think they’re some pre-Chernobyl Ukrainian sand tart I bought at the 99¢ store a couple of years ago–but still, the point is I can leave them alone. (You’d be surprised how seldom you have to buy cookies if all you ever get are brands like Carob Clusters and Prune Newtons).
Unfortunately, it is this very proclivity for buying the world’s cheapest cookies that has put me in twice the danger that a normal person–one who has been desensitized by years of Oreos and Chips Ahoys–is in when really good cookies like Samoas come into the house. Especially when they are laying around in open boxes by the caseful.