Searching for Girl Scout Cookies: An Odyssey
I don’t know about you guys, but Girl Scout cookie season always catches me with my pants down. I never have a plan—just a sudden flash of awareness that Girl Scout cookies are here, followed by a pounding, blinding lust that must be sated.
It’s why I’ve always felt like I understood serial killers. I too know what it is to submit to a hunger you can no longer ignore. There’s the increasingly urgent drumbeat of desire, followed by the irresistible act, the shame, the cooling-off period, and then a new flicker of need...which builds inevitably toward more carnage.
Anyhoo, Girl Scout cookies. They’re just so darn tasty! And for the record, I’m only talking about Samoas and Thin Mints. The rest can go to hell.
Part of my attraction to the cookies is that they’ve always played hard to get. They’re only available once a year, and you can’t even get them in a store. Usually I have to figure out who’s selling them in my office, then go to a weird floor that I don’t normally go to and make small talk with someone named Keith or Renee. It’s not painful, but I wouldn’t call it pleasant. Somewhere in the back of my head, I always knew there were real, live Girl Scouts out there, but I’d resigned myself to procuring the cookies in this way—that is, until this year, when my husband and I left New York City to ride out the plague in Savannah, Georgia.
Get this: Savannah is the birthplace of the Girl Scouts! I learned that on a plaque. I love plaques. They’re like little pieces of the internet, conveniently floating at eye level. You see them all over the place down here, and I’ve learned a lot. For example: Did you know that Savannah is the birthplace of singer-songwriter Johnny Mercer, who penned “Moon River”? Or that you can call Trina anytime to make your worries go bye-bye? Now that I think of it, I’m not sure I read that last one on a plaque.
“Big Time” by Jen Spyra
$27.00, Bookshop.org
But my point is, I was thrilled to learn that the Girl Scouts started right here in Savannah. I had landed in Girl Scout Ground Zero! I figured this year’s cookie search would be a cinch—I’d probably just have to stick out my hand! There might even be a parade. I closed my eyes and visions of huge, smiling Samoa and Thin Mint floats danced before me. Happy little Girl Scouts tossed boxes to cheering crowds. I reached out to catch them, moaning a little, just as my husband told me to snap out of it and that I was humiliating us in this CVS.
But as spring rolled around and no Girl Scout parades materialized, I had to face a painful fact: Girl Scout visibility is no higher here than it is in New York. And without an office to troll for cookies, if I wanted Samoas inside me, I was going to have to do things the old-fashioned way. I would have to track down a real, flesh-and-blood Girl Scout and do a Live Buy.
The thought was exhilarating—but little did I know that the experience itself would be one of the most brutalizing and humbling of my life.
Here’s how it went down.
Using the Girl Scout Cookie Finder, a feature of the Girl Scout website, I typed in my zip code, and boom: Up sprang a series of cookie vendor locations and dates. So far, so great.
I noted with satisfaction that my first LBO (Live Buy Opportunity) would be the next morning at the northeast corner of Forsyth Park. “It won’t be long, sweet darlings,” I murmured to myself, just as my husband passed by and asked if I was still on the cookie website.
The next morning I arrived comfortably early and beheld an awesome sight: a tiny Girl Scout in her proud blue slash, standing before a glorious rainbow wall of cookies.
She wore glasses and lopsided blond pigtails. It was all too perfect. I couldn’t believe she was real.
I whipped out some cash. The drumbeat was loud.
“Hi! Can I get one box of Samoas?” I asked, taking care to use a normal, human voice.
She nodded. “That’ll be four dollars.”
I kept my hand steady as I extended my five-dollar bill. She took it, then cocked her head, as if the darndest thing had just occurred to her.
“Would you like to make a donation for a dollar?”
“Sure,” I said, almost cutting her off. What did I care if the little twerp squeezed another buck out of me? The beautiful treasures were literally feet away from my mouth. She smiled and chirped, “Thank you!”
At this point, I almost broke into song. It was so easy. So incredibly pleasant! This adorable Girl Scout gets to feel like she’s learning business skills or something, I get the cookies that I need to survive—what’s not to love? I was having such a ball, I felt like prolonging the moment. I cast around for something to say.
“So. What’s your favorite cookie?”
She didn’t seem too excited by the question. In fact, I thought I saw a shiver of weariness flutter through her. It reminded me of this one time in high school when I went up to the keyboardist at a Tommy Bahama restaurant and asked him to play the piña colada song.
She recovered quickly, though. “It’s S’mores,” she said. I think she sensed another sale, because she added, “If you put them in the mic for just two seconds, they’re sooo good!”
“Wow, sounds great!” I said, wrapping up our happy little exchange. “I’ll have to try those sometime!”
She giggled and handed me the box of Samoas. And then, as I took them, she looked at me out of the corner of her eye.
“You’re really excited about the cookies,” she said.
Did I detect...a smirk? What the hell? I was just politely mirroring her enthusiasm. Something was off. It was time to get out of there. I turned and started away.
“Wait,” she called out. She ran out from behind her table and extended her little hand toward me. “This is my Cookie Card. You can order cookies from my website.” Then she uttered the phrase that sliced straight to the bone:
“You look like a person who would want more.”
A middle-aged woman let out a guffaw behind me as the Girl Scout skipped back to her table, no doubt energized by the years of my life force she had just sucked straight into her black heart. With that simple sentence, she had unmasked me for all the world to see. I wasn’t a respectable, human woman; I was a screaming void of cookie need.
I turned and walked back to my wretched cookie lair, the hag’s laughter ringing in my ears.
The Samoas were a little bit stale, as they always are. But as I slid them out of their plastic tray and sent them home, I had no regrets. So what if I was clearly “a person who would want more”? I do want more. I demand more. And after all, isn’t “Demand More” the motto of the Girl Scouts?
Wait, I just looked it up—it’s actually “Be Prepared.” Ah, whatever. I just really like Samoas.
Jen Spyra is a former staff writer for The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times. Big Time is her first book, available now.
Originally Appeared on Glamour
