The Girl Scout Secret...

There is a dark side of Girl Scouts that no one talks about. When they recruit for troop leaders they omit the darkest of all secrets. They hook you with images of skipping through green meadows while your arms are linked with little, wide-eyed girl scouts who want to glean whatever insight you have to share. You start to believe that little cartoon flowers will dance above the heads of your precious scouts at every meeting. 

And then, the darkness comes. You start to hear whisperings of it. Hushed tones and muted e-mails. You notice people twitching. You notice the nail biting. It is near. Then it is upon you like the fury of an angry volcano that spews forth molten lava. It just appears and no matter how much preparation you think you have you find it is not enough. It…is…not...enough…

 It is…cookie season.

Cookie season is a dark time. People are frothing to get their Thin Mints and girl scouts are selling like Wall Street traders to earn their trinkets and badges. And no matter how many cookies you unload…people still want more.

There is no time for sleep in cookie season. There is no time for skipping through green meadows. It is hard core sales. There are orders and re-orders and final orders. There is sorting to be done - no job for the feeble. The cookies must be sorted by type…then by scout…and then your daughter’s own order. As Cookie Guru one must pick up cases of cookies…C-A-S-E-S. Vehicle-loads of cases. Perhaps three vehicles? Perhaps 215 cases? Perhaps.

Cookie season is intense and the scouts have a steadfast determination to beat last year’s sales. My troop sold over 600 more boxes of cookies than they did the year prior. That translates to 50 more cases!

One mom and I nearly wept as she came by at 9pm one night to pick-up the last dribs and drabs of cookies her daughter had sold.

“Did she make it to 250?” she asked with tired eyes.

“Yes, my friend. Yes she did,” I said with the solemn and serious grace that such a momentous moment deserved.

Cookie season does that. It makes one a little crazy. There are orders to fill, monies to collect, booths to set-up. Thin Mints out-sell Oreos and Thin Mints are only available two months out of the year. That is cookie chaos in the making.

As much as I love leading my daughter’s troop I do not love cookie season. If not for my mom and my awesome co-leaders I would not be able to survive. I faced cookie season alone once…I am still scarred. That is why I do not request the giant cookie costumes for our girls to wear at our cookie booths. I have dreamed of giant Thanks-A-Lots chasing me down, I certainly don’t want to come face-to-face with one in real life.

When it is all said and done; when all the cookies are gone; when all the trinkets are awarded; when our small portion of troop sales is nestled into the bank account; it is then I sit back and think that was totally not worth it! I jest! I actually sit back and wonder if the box of Thin Mints I stashed in the freezer is still there?!