It’s late afternoon, and there’s a tap on the front door. You crack the door an inch and peep through the slit. A snaggle-toothed munchkin dressed in brown is smiling up at you nervously. In her chubby fist is a colorful order form. And you know at once that it’s Girl Scout cookie time.
Once upon a time, I was that little girl, pounding the pavement with my sister Jane. Up one side of North College Street and down the other. There was one house we always avoided, a two-story, wind-beaten house set back from the road engulfed in a gnarl of vines and pine trees. We’d never seen a soul go in or out of the tumbledown place, and we were certain a witch waited behind the paint-flaked door.
Years later when my daughters sold the boxes of cookies, I went along. As a mother, I no longer imagined hags behind closed doors. Instead, I had visions of kidnappers.
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All this knocking on doors and selling goodies started in the 1920s when Girl Scouts sold homemade cookies. But, the process we have today was born in 1934 when a Philadelphia group hired a professional baker. Shortbread was the first type they sold. Over the years, different kinds of cookies were added. Turns out my favorite, Thin Mints, are the most popular overall.
These days there’s not so much door knocking. You’re more likely to see a table set up outside Kroger or a mama taking orders at work.
Each year around 200 million boxes are sold. Georgia-born opera star Jessye Norman, an honorary lifetime Girl Scout attached to a troupe in Paris, sold more than 2,000 boxes a few years ago. “My best year ever,” the 70-year-old soprano said. “I get the stuffed bear and the patch just like the 10-year-olds. I will sell cookies to anybody, anywhere, on the street, to people out the back of my car.” Unlike other scouts, her car has a chauffeur.
The word “cookie” comes from the Dutch word “koekje,” which means “little cake.” In England they’re called “biscuits” and to Germans they’re “keks.”
I’ve never enjoyed baking cookies. It takes too much time watching and waiting. But my mother made all kinds of cookies when I was a little girl. Mine was a 1950s “Leave It to Beaver” childhood. I’d come in from school yelling, “Mama, I’m home!” and find a plate of warm, chewy molasses munchies on the table.
My sister Beth carried on the family tradition. She had a full repertoire — Toll House cookies, fruit cake cookies, bite-size spice cookies, and peanut butter cookies with a Hershey Kiss on top.
The truth is, I never met a cookie I didn’t like. Soon, my Girl Scout cookies will be stacked on the shelves — gobs of crisp round delicacies, cartons of melt-in-your-mouth treats. And I wonder, why do I splurge every year so soon after my yearly eat-healthy-resolution? It’s a good way to support the Girl Scouts, I tell myself. Somebody’s gotta do it.
