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It's Girl Scout cookie time, which means you have to run the gantlet of guilt when you enter a store or pass a table full of earnest young girls. When Daughter was a Girl Scout, I'd drag her through the office with an order sheet: "Here is my adorable child. Would you like to sour her on capitalism? No? How many boxes?"
Of course you want some. You can't stop yourself. They are ridiculously delicious. And they appear at the worst time of the year: It has been cold forever, and the Minnesota mood is akin to a Napoleonic soldier retreating from Moscow.
You deserve this. And it's charity! Why, it's probably tax-deductible.
The nice little girl begins the spiel:
"Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies?"
Yes, of course, I'll buy some cookies! Where is that Girl Scout? I will certainly get a circular confection. A Do-si-do, perhaps? A Hi-dee-ho? Got any Whoop-dee-dums?
"No, would you like to buy Girl Scout cookies? We have Persnickerwhackadoods."
Are those the ones with the sugar? I love those. Do you have the ones called — oh, I can't remember, rhymes with Shin Splints.
"Thin Mints?"
Yes! Those can't possibly make you fat, or people would have sued you because of the name. I love the way it showers crumbs all over your pants when you bite into one. What else do you have?
"We have Shortbreads."
Oh, those are great. They are like a tender fossil made out of butter.
(I understand that S'mores was the most popular flavor introduced in the past 100 years, which makes you wonder what other cookies they had in 1917. I believe they had Toasted Quinine, which was good if you had the Spanish Flu, and Horehound Divots and Suff-ra-gettes, which got you arrested if you ate them on voting day. We've come a long way.)
But I digress. You buy three boxes from the cookie-peddling youngster, thinking, "I'll take them to work." Because if you take them in to work, the office-calorie-cancellation phenomenon takes place. You can bring in a box of Caramel deLites, then take a cookie from the box of Caramel deLites someone else brought. Caloric impact: nil.
My wife brought home four boxes. I asked her later where they came from. She wasn't quite certain. It just happened. That's how it is. The cookies just happen. In the break room of an Antarctica research station there are boxes of Girl Scout cookies, and no one knows how they got there. No one remembers a Girl Scout coming to the door selling them. Nor was there a team of girls seated at a table the researchers passed on their way to recalibrate the windchill instruments. But the cookies are there, somehow, so everyone digs in.
As you may know, Elon Musk sent a Tesla car off to Mars in SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket launch. What you don't know is that the trunk was full of Girl Scout cookies. Because when it lands on Mars, there are going to be Girl Scouts set up with a table and the future astronauts will be able to say, "No, thanks, already have some."
Because you just hate to say "nope" and leave it at that.
james.lileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858 • Twitter: @Lileks • facebook.com/james.lileks
