February Is the Cruelest Month

Why? Because it's Girl Scout cookie month.

I am a temperate person in most respects, but I have a weakness for Girl Scout cookies—or, to be more specific, the Trefoils. The rest I have no liking for, but the Trefoils I can polish off at the rate of a box a day (two if I'm not careful).

And there's no avoiding them. If the only opportunity  I had to buy cookies was when the Girl Scouts came door-to-door selling them, I'd be fine because I'd buy my quota and then be done with it for the year, but it doesn't work that way here in the suburbs. You go to the shopping mall, there's a troop there with a table full of cookies (and they're never out of my flavor). You go to the pizza place, there's a troop there. You go to the grocery store, there's a troop there—every single day. So far, they've left my other haunts, the library and Barnes and Noble, alone, but I'm sure that won't last forever.

So you might say, just walk on past the Girl Scouts, with their tempting array of cookies. But while walking the dog tonight (and incidentally burning off at least one cookie), I realized that I should not do that. You see, selling these cookies helps to build these girls' self-esteem. Conversely, not selling them can only hurt their self-esteem, right? So if I walk past these girls staring so hopefully at me, I might well be planting the seeds for disaster. Her self-confidence shattered, one of these sweet little girls drifts away from the Girl Scouts, into the wrong crowd, into a teenage pregnancy, on to marriage to a creep and a life wasted watching bad daytime television. And all because I didn't buy a lousy box of Trefoils.

No, no, I can't take the guilt. I'm buying two more boxes tomorrow.





Above: The Cruel Face of Temptation