Trekkychick

Dear Readers,

It seems they’re everywhere these days, staking out your nearby Safeway when you try to pick up your prescription; haunting your local Fred Meyer when you’re just there to buy a few groceries. Sure, one of them may look innocent, but behind those wide eyes and toothless grin there stands a greedy tycoon peddling a subpar product to the highest bidder. And then they utter those 9 words to get you hooked:

“Would you like to buy some girl scout cookies?”

And I know their tactics well. I used to be a member of their cult. I wore the same gang apparel—-aka girl scout uniform—; I sold those same cookies. (Not the same cookies; those have since been eaten. But I think you get my drift.) I menaced innocent store customers with my metal-mouthed grin and then-natural-blond pigtails, and I watched them melt in fear and resign themselves to their cookie-purchasing fate. And even after I underwent girl scout rehab and left the cookie cult behind for good, I dreamed uneasily for years of tagalongs and thin mints and I would wake up in a cold sweat screaming, “Samoas! Samoas!”

It appears since then things have gone from bad to worse. The box that once cost $2.50 now sells for $4.00, while the size of the box has shrunk and now houses two cookies, max. The savvy scouts intercept you at all major store entrances, so that to avoid them is to make your approach by way of the roof, slipping in through a loose ceiling panel, and free-falling into aisle three where they stock the ankle wraps and bandages, which I needed after my elaborate entrance. My attempts to lobby for a more informative sales pitch, such as “Would you like to buy some high-fat, chemically-processed cookies for the same price that would allow a homeless child to eat for a week?” have been unilaterally unsuccessful, and my class, “Kill the Cookies 101″ received an inexplicable 0% attendance rate. And even my documentary set to blow the lid off the cookie jar, called “Cookies, Inc,” went straight to DVD when a similarly-entitled movie was released at the same time. (Although I’m still glad I exported the film from my computer’s iMovie onto that DVD–in case my Readers want an advance copy.)

I’ve taken some conservative measures to freeze out the girl scout cookies (that’s freeze out, Readers, not freeze, although thin mints taste delicious right out of the freezer, especially when paired with a tall glass of whole milk and an echocardiogram), and you’re welcome to incorporate my reasonable tactics into your own life as you see fit. These measures I’ve taken simply involve the elimination of all situations that might present an opportunity to buy cookies. For example, in my daily work life I’ve stopped working with students who are also girl scouts. At the grocery store, I wear a giant cardboard sign around my neck that says, “I DON’T BELIEVE IN COOKIES,” which exempts me from interrogation in all cases except for those pesky young scouts who haven’t yet learned to read. (But they can read facial expressions, so in those cases I pair my sign with a scowl.)

Stand strong, Readers, and remember to comment for your chance to win your very own copy of “Cookies, Inc,” the award-winning* film by Troi.

*I awarded myself with a box of girl scout cookies after filming it.

–Troi out