Please Don’t Eat All the Thin Mints

 In Colorado, some brainy Scout recently decided to hawk her Thin Mints in front of a pot dispensary. Surprise! She sold a gazillion boxes of cookies! And another Girl Scout stood outside a bar and SHE sold oodles of cookies too!
Miss Crankypants remembers the biggest challenge of these annual campaigns: to keep from eating all the stuff you’re supposed to be selling!
 See, Miss CP was a Camp Fire Girl. In Campfire, you sell boxes of chocolates instead of cookies. And you hope and pray the cookie-vending Girl Scouts stay out of your territory!
Picture poor little Miss CP, dutifully hauling a wagon load of Russell Stover boxes up and down the streets of Yuma, Arizona, where the average temperature can cook your average sidewalk fried egg in ten seconds flat.
It was always a race against time. You ran from door to door and hoped your candy hadn’t turned into liquid chocolate before you got past the first block. Miss Cranky, dying of heat stroke in the required Campfire uniform, would recite the rehearsed script to a bored housewife who really wanted to get back to General Hospital before the commercial. The housewife would then break Miss CP’s pea-pickin lil heart, informing her that some GIRL SCOUT had already been round and sold her the equivalent of a year’s supply of Samoas.
Miss CP was always unprepared for this news, and frequently burst into tears, tearing off her Campfire vest as she trudged to the next house.  At that point, Miss CP would crack open a box and take a bite out of every single candy piece.
Oh those Girl Scouts, always thinking they’re so great! They loved to make fun of us Campfire types, taunting us with the fact that we didn’t even have hats to go with our uniforms. While GS uniforms had all sorts of cool ensembles (green and tan anyone?), Campfire girls had a dumb vest with beads and ugly dark blue pleated skirt. Oh how we longed for badges!
And when Miss Cranky finally got up the nerve to ring another doorbell, some old guy came out and yelled that if he saw another Girl Scout he’d call the police. And that’s before Miss CP even asked him to buy her boxes of melted chocolates! She devoured another three boxes of candy to calm her nerves.
If she had it to do over again, she’d have just pulled her wagon down to the local watering hole and waited outside for the money to roll in. And if she could get her hands on a  Girl Scout uniform, she’d sell even more boxes of what used to be fine chocolates. Or just give up and eat all the candy herself. In Marketing, you have to go with what works.

About Linda S. Clare

I'm an author, speaker, writing coach and mentor. I teach both fiction and nonfiction writing at Lane Community College and in the doctoral program as expert writing advisor for George Fox University. I love helping writers improve their craft and I'm both an avid reader and writer of stories about those with wounded hearts.

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