girl scouts

The other day my mom and I stopped by a Chinese restaurant to pick up some take-out, and as we were patiently waiting for our neatly-boxed servings of rice and chicken to be prepared, I noticed a list tacked onto the front counter. On closer inspection, I realized that the title of the said list read, "BAD CHECKS," followed by a lengthy assortment of names and dates that the checks were received. I wasn't sure whether I should grimace in horrid distaste or laugh myself to the point of purging the contents of my stomach when, as I glanced down the series of names, I noticed a girl scout troop among the guilty. A goddamn girl scout troop -- one I used to belong to, back in the day.

And no, before anyone asks, I did not physically assault those who did not purchase cookies from me, because my weapon of choice had been confiscated the Halloween beforehand. In my defense, it was dark and I was unaware of the recent Teletubby craze.

But I digress. Has anyone seen those dead-ass cheap prizes girl scouts receive in return for pushing cookies? During my first year of middle school as a fifth-grader, I wore nothing but T-shirts with Looney Tunes characters embroidered above the pockets, and for three consecutive years I wore a shirt with a squirrel depicted on it. When I received a T-shirt as a prize for selling girl scout cookies one year, I refused to wear it, not even in the privacy of my own home. It had smiling Thin Mints, for the love of everything sane. I shoved it into my bottom dresser drawer with distaste, and didn't see it until years later when I was forced to empty the contents of my dresser because moths had infested it due to the bird seed that we had stored therein.

Before I began school, I tagged along with my dad on an errand to the Salvation Army, where he was planning on dropping off an old television that we no longer wanted given its regrettable state of quality. My parents told me not to disclose the value of the timeworn television to any Salvation Army employees. As my dad and I were entering the building, I noticed two elderly women sitting on a bench near the entrance.

Motioning towards the decrepit television in my dads arms, I informed them, "It's shot."

We dropped that TV off at the Salvation Army that day; however, we refused to give them the T-shirt years later because of how insulting we felt it would've been.

I was only a girl scout for a year.