I am a Girl Scout Cookie addict. However, I hate the Girl Scouts.

My mother was the Brownie troop leader. However, even after I'd graduated to Girl Scouts, she kept driving me to those damn meetings for years. I made Cadette. Those stupid fucking Jumpers. Oh God.

She thought it was this great feminist thing to be a girl version of the boy scouts. She had that whole idealized proto-girl-power thing going on. She thought that these elementary school kids from white trash families wanted to be involved in community-building, make friends, learn new skills, etc. I swear to God she actually believed that. I also think she was looking for some sort of social arena to counteract the horrific playground and lunchroom experiences I had at school.

What she didn't realize was that since I was the dorky child of two 60's liberal parents in a midwestern Christian republican town, I wasn't safe anywhere. Scouts was simply another arena for Female Dominance games to be played, with even more ruthlessness, because the stringent behavior rules that school employed weren't enforced in the Gym at the scout meetings. "Sisterhood" made me glad I was an only child. The minute that bell rang and we trooped into the Gym in those stupid uniforms - which my Mom made me wear, but the cool girls didn't - those bitches-in-training used me as their punching bag. I specifically remember when I was about nine, I went home in tears because those nasty little shits made fun of me for the entire hour-long troop meeting while the supposed Leader was on the phone in an office across the hall. I don't think Mom believed me. "GIRL SCOUTS are NICE to each other. Be nice to them and they'll be nice to you." Oh Yeah. Right.

I will never forget the disillusionment in her eyes when she told me that, one evening, she had angrily confronted a small group of my 11-year-old tormetors. "Don't you girls care about being good Girl Scouts? Don't you want to make friends? Be good people?" "No," they said. "Then why did you sign up for this!?" She shrieked. "To make things. And hang out. And do stuff. I hear we might go camping." She was stunned. I wish my self-esteem had been high enough for me to feel vindicated. I do remember thinking to myself "I TOLD you they were mean. I TOLD YOU." I was actually happier and felt safer at school. At School. Just think about that.

Thank God for the demanding schedule of musical theatre that I managed to drown myself in, which managed to shift my parents' focus from community service (or whatever the hell scouts is supposed to be) to arts. Thank God also for the additional parental alienation of heavy metal which finally stopped my Mom from forcing me to socialize with pretty much anyone.

And selling cookies? Oh God, the Annual Cookie Humiliation. I dreaded the pressure of having to try and sell unhealthy expensive cookies to people who were too busy trying not to laugh at that godforsaken uniform. The humiliation came when I had to sit there silently, ignored, while every other girl in the damn troop bragged about how she'd sold 100 or 500 or 1000 boxes. I usually sold 10 or 12. Mostly to my own parents. When the girls started screeching "Ouiser didn't sell ANY THIS WEEK!!!" The leaders would shake their heads and frown at me and say something like "Don't you have any friends?" Or Why don't you give it to your parents to take to the office?" Oh, and my Idealist parents refused to sell them for me. Flat out REFUSED. Some kind of capitalist protest I suppose. I don't know what they thought they were doing for me. They were just completely out of touch with my world.

There was one time the leader said "Ouiser doesn't HAVE to sell cookies if she doesn't want to." In a very frosty voice. Everyone was quiet as she said it. I don't remember anything else about that entire year of scouts. Maybe that was the year I quit. I think it just drove in the final "She's not one of us" wedge. Everyone knew I was different. I didn't go to church with any of them. I didn't like sports, watch the Dukes of Hazzard, listen to FM radio, (my parents wouldn't let me), or wear fashionable clothes. I got straight A's and didn't know any Sean Cassidy songs. Now I didn't want to sell cookies.

I was outta there.

I wonder if she said that because my mother had yelled at her for letting the kids make fun of me.

In later years, my folks would buy the cookies from the neighbor kids. I loved eating those damn cookies. Oh man did I love them. I would go through an entire sleeve of thin mints while watching an hour TV program. I could eat a whole box of Samoas in one sitting. By the time I was 14, I was dancing with the local Ballet company, was very thin, very alienated, and ate TONS of junk food. I think I saw those cookies as something I wasn't supposed to have. I was shoved into Girl Scouts for 6 years and told the whole time that nobody wanted me there. Fine, fuck you guys. I'm eating every cookie ever made. Thank God for Ballet and a super-high metabolism. If I hadn't been so stressed out at school that I threw up my breakfast almost every morning for 4 years and hardly ever ate any lunch there, I probably would have gotten very fat. For about a year I lived on cookies and whatever Mom cooked for dinner.

Once I moved away to college, my cookie supply was cut off, but I miraculously began to make friends, and suddenly had an appetite for normal food on a regular basis again.

Once, when I was about 21, I saw a 9 or 10 year old strawberry blonde sitting behind a card table in her green uniform, complete with beanie and sash full of patches, selling boxes of cookies for cash. This wasn't how you did it when I was a kid. She didn't have to sweat while people chewed on their pencils, wondering how many boxes they'd actually eat, and then have to face these people again a month or two later to deliver the orders and collect checks. She was doing it the smart way. Park yourself with the goodies in front of the Student Bookstore looking adorable, and watch the money roll in! Starving students! Use the cuteness factor! I was impressed.

I didn't buy a box. I was too intimidated to talk to her. I was afraid she'd call me snotty-face.

I hate the Girl Scouts. I hate them.

I hope I don't get sued for this post. But then that would be just like them.