Blogs

By Jerry Zezima

I like to think I’m a tough cookie, but my sweet tooth, which may have a cavity, can’t resist the treats sold every year by the Girl Scouts.

That’s why I have bought two boxes of cookies from my 8-year-old granddaughter, who represents the third generation of Girl Scouts in our family.

They include my wife, Sue, and our two daughters, one of whom is the current Scout’s mother.

To this impressive list you can add yours truly. I may not be a girl, and was never even a Boy Scout, but I once dressed up as a giant Samoa to help a Girl Scout troop ring up impressive cookie sales.

When I told this to my granddaughter, she said, “Samoas are my favorites!” Then she paused and said, “Wait a minute. You dressed up like a cookie?”

“Yes,” I acknowledged. “It was about 20 years ago.”

“Was Mommy a Girl Scout then?” my granddaughter wanted to know.

“No, she was all grown up,” I replied. “And she wouldn’t have wanted to be seen with me.”

“Like she didn’t want to be seen with you when she was my age?” my granddaughter asked.

“That’s right,” I said. “But I still had to help her sell Girl Scout cookies.”

Then I told my granddaughter how I took the order form to work to guilt colleagues into buying cookies that they said would add unwanted pounds.

I countered by convincing them that they would make me a hero in the eyes of my daughter. Not only that, but it wouldn’t be right to disappoint a little girl whose entire troop was counting on her to bring in wads of cash so the Girl Scouts of the USA could stay solvent with enough dough to pay for the dough it took to make — you guessed it — rum balls.

Sorry, I mean Thin Mints.

Unfortunately, some of my co-workers also were the parents of Girl Scouts and were selling cookies, too, so I invariably ended up with a net loss and, of course, unwanted pounds.

It was the same with my older daughter, who also expected me to dragoon relatives, friends, neighbors and office mates into buying baked goods with a sales pitch that was half-baked.

My shining moment as a cookie entrepreneur came when I teamed up with the girls of Troop 2240 in Suffolk County, New York, to help sell boxes of Tagalongs, Trefoils, Thin Mints and, yes, Samoas in the lobby of a municipal building that teemed with a bewildered lunchtime crowd.

The girls wore their classic green Girl Scout uniforms. I was shamelessly decked out in a costume whose front featured big cartoon eyes and a smiley face, with a brown and yellow background that made me look like a crazed cookie.

The Scouts thought I was cool. If I had done this when my daughters were young, they would have died of embarrassment.

“Did you sell a lot of cookies?” my granddaughter wondered.

“Yes,” I recalled proudly.

“Did people think you were crazy?” she inquired.

“Yes,” I answered honestly. “But it was fun. And I helped the girls raise money for their troop.”

I did the same this time around by succumbing to the sales pitch of my daughter, the former Scout, who also convinced my wife, the family’s original member, to order cookies. My mother bought some, too.

My granddaughter thanked me for buying a box of Do-si-dos, peanut butter sandwich cookies that are my favorite, and a box of Lemon-Ups, crispy lemon cookies baked with inspiring messages like “I am a leader.”

I’m surprised mine didn’t say, “I am a dweeb.”

“If you want,” I told my granddaughter, “I’ll dress up like a giant Samoa again to help your troop sell cookies.”

“That’s OK,” she said. “I don’t want to die of embarrassment.”

—Jerry Zezima

Jerry Zezima writes a humor column for Tribune News Service, which distributes it to newspapers nationwide and abroad. He is also the author of seven books, Leave It to Boomer, The Empty Nest Chronicles, Grandfather Knows Best, Nini and Poppie’s Excellent Adventures, Every Day Is Saturday, One for the Ageless and his latest, The Good Humor Man: Tales of Life, Laughter and, for Dessert, Ice Cream, all of which are “crimes against literature.” He has won nine awards from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists for his humorous writing.