They. Are. After Me.

They.  Are.  After me.

They could be lurking around any corner.  They could spring out at any minute and attack.  I know they’re coming for me.  It’s just a matter of when.

They are the Girl Scouts.

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Now--it’s not that I’m trying to avoid buying cookies from these Girl Scouts.  Oh no--I love me some Girl Scout cookies.  In fact, I have purchased cookies from three separate Girl Scouts within one week this year—and none of them were even in my class.  One girl’s name I don’t even know, but she whipped out that purple and green striped order form and I was sold. 

It is almost humanly impossible for me to resist ordering cookies from a Girl Scout.  Those Samoas are morsels of heaven.  Full boxes have been known to be reduced to a single remaining cookie in my household within one day.  And when the supply is gone for good, I try to fill the void left by their absence.  One year I even tried an ice cream brand that puts out a line of Girl Scout Cookie flavors, but the ratio of cookie pieces to vanilla ice cream was disappointingly low.

And so when I’m in my classroom after school, my stomach rumbling after a long day of teaching,  I always say yes to a friendly girl scout hawking her wares.  I mean—it’s for a good cause.  You have to support your local Girl Scout troop by buying their delicious and highly addictive products, right?  Your local Scout that you love so dearly and—what was her name again?  Oh well.  Just mark me down for a box of Samoas.

Image: scottchan

Three order forms later, multiple boxes of the magnificent, coconut-covered, chocolate and caramel drizzled confections are one step closer to my mouth.  I don’t even have to pay until they arrive!  Which works out well, because all I have is a $20 bill.  Mental note – get change for the girl scouts.  $4 in cash.  Got it.  How hard could that be?

Thus begins the period of dread, knowing the Scouts will be coming for me, demanding my four single dollar bills, not being able to break a large bill.  At any minute, they could show up, hands held out expectantly, waiting for me to produce exactly four dollars.

I watch the contents of my wallet, greedy for any cash transaction that will result in some ones.  I carefully amass a stack of single dollar bills and squirrel them away behind some old receipts in my wallet, not to be touched until Cookie Delivery Day. 

But then. 

I use three of them to buy a coffee because it’s too small an amount to put on a credit card.  I loan a coworker two more to use the copy machines at the public library where we’re gathering resources.  “But what if?” I think, tightly clutching my last two ones and contemplating telling her I’m out of cash. “What if the Girl Scouts come and I have no ones?  Noooo!”  I reluctantly hand over the last of my precious commodity.

And then….it happens. 

Girl of Unknown Name comes by to settle up my unpaid bill.  She doesn’t appear to have either $16 in change or a credit card swiping machine, but then I remember!  I had tucked away exactly four dollars in my drawer for this precise event.  Phew! 

At least one of them is now off my back. 

But now I’m back to square one.  No single dollar bills.  Two more Girl Scouts liable to turn up at any minute.  They’re still after me. 

Help!