I believe in girl scouts

I did something sort of horrible today. After buying a box of girl scout cookies (1), I checked their change counting in my head, and, worse yet, for a moment doubted the freckly scouts gave me the correct change.

I spent most of my morning at work chatting online with my best friend who is across the country. Normally, even though my job is painfully boring, I wouldn't do this. But last night my boyfriend broke up with me. Or so I thought. Or at the very least, I assumed that he had forced me into the position of breaking up with him today. (The day is still young.) I logged on to ask my best friend if I was going to end up going to a sperm bank and raising a baby on my own. (2)

This is the sort of thing that happens when you're a highly stressed out immature artist type dating the immature critical mind type who is suffering from (reveling in?) ennui.

At this point my boss (who also must think our work is boring) puppetted up from behind a cubicle half-wall to inform me there were girl scouts about peddling cookies. Oh no. Depression food. And I have cash. I'm heartbroken and hurt, but I do not want to stoop to depressed. I stealthily typed this to my best friend.

But she has a different opinion on girl scout cookies. Her great aunt helped to found the Girl Scouts and she tells me I should support a good cause. (3) I decide to agree with her and on my way to the official break up, I buy a box.

Safely out of the eyes of my pending ex, I stow the cookies in my bag for after and ride my bike towards his house. I think for a moment about how the girls counted my change back. The red head counted it to the one who looked like a 9-year-old version of my sister who counted it back to me. There is always such an awkward element to this yearly exchange with girl scouts. You never pay attention to the money because you're just smiling at them trying to calm their nerves as they focus on counting and being polite.

And in that brief moment where I recounted in my head, I remembered my friend Gwen from high school yearbook. She was a foreign exchange student and I was her editor. The rest of my staff had long ago forgotten how to diagram English sentences, but Gwen! Gwen was the perfect proofreader. If she didn't understand the sentence, it was not a sentence. And (4) if a girl scout can't count change, NO ONE can count change. Such concentration, such care paid to detail! Nope, a girl scout would never screw someone over. ESPECIALLY not a fellow girl on her way to be screwed over by a guy. Some dumb boy! Some cootie-carrying asshole. (5)

So I took my cookies home after the breakup (6) and found my neighbors trying to push a car that was parking them in. They were pissed and hot and sweaty. Cue cookies! We leaned against the cumbersome, unaffected bastard of a car and ate our cookies. It's hard to bitch with cookies in your mouth. So we didn't. Those clever girls.

(1) Samoas, of course.

(2) When we're in high school we're terrified we'll get pregnant, then later we're terrified we'll be one of "those women" who raise a family on their own. It's unfair and I respect women who do it. And while I may be being dramatic, I do sort of assume I will be one of these women.

(3) According to the website of Troop 1440 of Wakefield, Massachusetts, Girl Scouts most likely sold cookies since 1912, the year of their founding, but the first commercially-baked cookies were sold in Philadelphia in 1936.

(4) Gwen would not approve of this sentence beginning with a conjunction, but I'm a native grammar breaker.

(5) Too far?

(6) You yadda yadda yaddad over the best part. I mentioned the cookies.