“C is for cookie, that’s good enough for me.”
- Cookie Monster
IRRATIONAL BRAIN: I want a pickup truck.
RATIONAL BRAIN: But you’re not a contractor.
You’re not a plower. You’re not anybody that in
any way can justify owning a vehicle like that.
IB: Yes, it’s true…where I come from, if you
drive a pickup, your work justifies driving one.
But, up here, everybody has one! In the North
Country, it seems like every man with a beard
and a Meatloaf album owns a pickup. And I fit
that criteria!!!
RB: Okay, look…you own two vehicles: a Subaru
and a 2010 Prius that still runs perfectly fine.
Even though it doesn’t have all-wheel drive,
with the addition of snow tires, that little Prius
got you through last winter without a hiccup,
didn’t it? You don’t need a pickup, man.
IR: C’mon, Jack…how long do you think that
Prius is gonna last? You’ve changed the oil
maybe twice in 14 years. It’s dinged, scratched,
smells like mice, it’s missing part of a fender
and sounds like an abused sewing machine.
Besides, last winter in the Adirondacks was a
piece of cake. Wait’ll a REAL Adirondack winter
comes along. Then you’ll see, owning a Prius up
here is like bringing a butter knife to a gun
fight. Or like throwing Barney Fife into the ring
with Mike Tyson…it’s insane! You NEED a
pickup, man!
In the immortal and insightful words of Kurt
Vonnegut: “And so it goes.”
The eternal battle between What You Need
versus What You Want is an everyday
conundrum. Who wins? For me, that depends
on three things: size of need vs. size of price tag
vs. size of spousal approval.
If I can honestly agree with two of those
(“honestly” being the key word there), I can
justify anything. When I can only agree with
just one, I try to walk away (“try” being the key
word there). When it comes to my pickup, I
cannot honestly agree with even one. And yet, I
look for a “For Sale” sign in the window of
every pickup I see. But as much as I want a
pickup and love Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell
album, that’s not what this piece is about.
This piece is about Girl Scout Cookies.
Girl Scout Cookies defy all logic. Just try to
apply my “rules of temptation” to Girl Scout
Cookies. I dare ya’. Need? Nobody needs Girl
Scout cookies. Price? They’re not all that
expensive. Spousal approval? My wife would
shove an old lady to get some Thin Mints.
But Girl Scout Cookies have four major things
working for them that make them damn near
irresistible. First, they’re for a great cause. Who
can deny that an association dedicated to
guiding girls into adulthood, especially today,
isn’t one of the best places to donate your
charity dollars? Second, they’re really good! Of
course, everyone has their favorite, (mine are
Do-si-dos), but there isn’t a dog in the bunch.
Third, you can’t get them all the time. Some
famous person famously said, “Absence makes
the heart grow fonder.” In this case, absence
makes the craving for Do-si-Dos grow into a
drooling, bearded maniac. And fourth, who can
resist the Girl Scouts themselves selling those
cookies with their homemade signs, uniforms
and badges???
Given those four assets, no wonder “As of
2018, Girl Scout Cookies have sold more than
200 million boxes each season for $800 million,
resulting in approximately $600 million in net
revenue for the Girl Scouts to distribute.”*
That’s an astounding number. But compared to
Ford’s yearly profit of $8 BILLION dollars from
sales of its F-150** pickup truck alone, it
doesn’t even compare.
But I have a solution. (You thought maybe I
didn’t?) Let’s make a pickup truck out of Girl
Scout Cookies.
We’ll call it the GS-150, or wait…no. The
Badger!!! (See what I did to you there?) First of
all, the Badger would only be available for a
short time each year, spiking demand
tremendously. They wouldn’t be as ridiculously
expensive as the competition. And they’d
always be in good taste. (Place immature snort
and giggle here).
I’ll leave most of the design thoughts to the
automotive engineers, but just a few things
come to mind. Samoa cookies would make
excellent wheels with their coconut and sticky
goodness for gripping, like Caribbean snow
tires. Of course, my Do-si-do’s would have to be
the steering wheels. That way, when you’re
stuck in traffic or in a long drive-thru line at
Burger King, just lean forward and take a bite!
And maybe the whole body could be comprised
of Trefoils, those oddly shaped underdogs of
taste.
There you have it, friends and neighbors…the
Girl Scout Badger. Of course, holding its own in
a wreck might turn out to be a slight problem.
But that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
*The Girl Scouts of America
*Ford Media
PULL QUOTE: “What you need versus What you
want is an everyday conundrum.”