Cookie

Today is the day! The Girl Scout Cookies are here! I get my cookies from coworkers. Last year they didn’t arrive until around 330pm. I didn’t eat lunch that day. I was so hungry I ate a whole box of samoas. My body started to shake. I walked around like Beavis with my shirt over my head muttering “more samoas”. I had to leave work and lie down for 35 days.

I don’t mind people selling their kids’ Girl Scout cookies at work. But if they were having a sales contest it would be a little unfair. One kid knocks on doors all day in her neighborhood to sell cookies. After two weeks she has blisters on her hand from ringing and knocking. She sells 300 boxes.

Another kid gets her mom to sell cookies at her job at Hugeco. Mom unfurls a huge banner on top of the building that can be seen from Mexico, “THIN MINTS ARE HERE! CALL MARY IN ACCOUNTING!” After two weeks Mary’s kid has sold 257,000 boxes.

I like buying from coworkers because it is easy. This year I spent $7000. Between Girl Scout cookies expenditures and March Madness bets, I’m broke. So when I get home and the neighborhood Girl Scout knocks on my door I say, “Oh, I already bought some at work.” Then a pained look comes over her 8-year-old face. I look down at her bruised and bloodied hands and I HAVE to buy cookies from her. 100 boxes. She takes American Express.

The Girl Scouts cookie campaign is pervasive. Some of them sell cookies outside the neighborhood grocery store. Somehow they look too old to be Girl Scouts. They are smoking cigarettes and checking each other’s tattoos. Since I already have enough boxes to build a small castle, I look straight ahead and avoid eye contact as I walk into the store. I swear I heard one of them say, “Hey, buy some cookies or I’ll have my cousin whack ya!”

Cookies come in too many different sizes. I was at Mrs. Field’s Cookies at the mall the other day. They sell different sizes including small, bite size ones. Do people buy those? Why? Cookies should only be one of two sizes. BIG. And BIGGER.

There is a serious case of false advertising in the cookie industry. It seems that some cookies are made with white chocolate. It turns out white chocolate DOESN’T HAVE ANY CHOCOLATE IN IT. Unacceptable. That’s like the time KISS re-formed without Peter Criss and Ace Frehley. Not the same as the real thing.

There was an urban legend going around last year that a lady loved the chocolate chip cookies at Neiman- Marcus so much she asked if she could buy the recipe. She thought the salesperson said it would cost $2.50 and to add it to her bill. When she got her statement it said $250! She called the accounting department at the store demanding a refund. The store said no.

The lady then put the SECRET RECIPE on the internet to get revenge.

Neiman-Marcus didn’t even SELL cookies before this bogus story started. They began to sell cookies because so many people asked for them.

The urban legend actually created the reality. It makes me want to start an urban legend about myself- “Tyra Banks stalks Joe Ditzel. Ditzel encourages this behavior.”

It is through my love of cookies that I learned the one thing women want out of life: cash. No, that’s not it. Well, not completely. Women want CHOCOLATE. Chocolate is more valuable than gold. I remember having lunch with two women when we ordered a “communal” giant chocolate brownie for desert. The brownie was supposed to be covered in melted chocolate. The waiter served the melted chocolate in a separate server. The women looked at him like he was an idiot. One of them grabbed the server and poured it over the brownie in disgust. Never serve chocolate on the side, she exclaimed!

The king of cookies is, of course, chocolate chip. The first chocolate chip cookie appeared in Massachusetts in 1937. Cookie sales soon pulled the country out of the recession. Well, that and World War II.

My mom used to make chocolate chip cookies for us after school. The smell filled the whole house. The problem was there were 97 kids in my family. She had to mix the batter in an above-ground pool. With an Evinrude outboard. When she was done mixing she let us lick the propeller.

I love to take a giant chocolate chip cookie and cover it with ice cream and fudge and then sprinkle Toll House Chips on top of that. I eat it from a serving dish usually used to serve pasta for twelve people.

But I use a teaspoon. I’m not a pig.