You'll Never Sell Girl Scout Cookies to a Cat That Way

Daisies recently vis­ited the book­store to sell Girl Scout Cook­ies.  After los­ing 30 lbs. last year, it was dif­fi­cult not to see these lit­tle girls with their boxes of sugar-coated fat as Satan in blue smocks, but I just breathed deeply and told them that I had given all of my cash to home­less peo­ple to pur­chase a bot­tle of Mad Dog to share.  They asked what Mad Dog was; I asked them to tell me the last book they read.

I’d for­got­ten how loud and excitable girls in the 5–7 age group can be.  Every­thing they see requires them to shout, “That’s so cute!” and com­mand their friends to focus their atten­tion the cute object of their atten­tion imme­di­ately.  “LOOK, GERTA! LOOK!  LOOK!”  Mean­while, Gerta twisted a strand of hair around her fin­ger, as she pressed nose against the glass of the door that I had just cleaned with Windex.  Finally, I had to shout, “For the love of God, Gerta, look at the damned book­mark!”  Gerta’s mother gave me the I’ll-Be-Waiting-For-You-In-The-Parking-Garage-With-My-Car-Running expres­sion.  I sup­pose Daisy enthu­si­asm can be contagious.

I’m sure that I was just as loud at that age and pressed my nose against just as much, or more, clean glass.  Still, I couldn’t help feel­ing that kids these days are dif­fer­ent from when I was young.  It’s not just the fact that milk is filled with hor­mones and that these girls could sprout a bosom like Dolly Par­ton at any moment.  I worry that kids are overly stim­u­lated these days.  They come out of the womb, latch on to their mother’s nip­ple like it was a joy­stick, and say, “How come I can’t find the cur­sor?”  By the time they’re a few years old, they often times sound so jaded.  I asked a lit­tle girl a few weeks ago if she liked to read Dr. Seuss.  She rolled her eyes at me and replied, “Per­son­ally, I find Seuss to be rather banal and cliche.  I pre­fer the edgi­ness and unpre­dictabil­ity of Shel Sil­ver­stein.  He’s real.”

There­fore, I was delighted when the Daisies took an inter­est in our book­store cat, who was snooz­ing soundly on a dis­play table of bar­gain books.  The girls imme­di­ately flocked around her.  The cat tensed up.  I sug­gested to the girls that they not crowd around the cat and pet her, one at a time, very gen­tly.  Instead, they pro­ceeded to all grab at her fur like she was the last food sam­ple on the tray at the gro­cery store.  Need­less to say, the cat nipped one of them.  One of the girls grabbed her arm and stepped back, then screamed “THE CAT BIT ME!”  She spun around the room like she was going to pass out from the blood loss of the scratch.  I asked if she needed a tourni­quet.  She asked what a tourni­quet was, sud­denly obliv­i­ous to the pain.

At this point, the Girl Scout leader rounded them up to stand out­side and sell cook­ies.  I found myself admir­ing the energy of those lit­tle girls, hun­gry to expe­ri­ence the world with all of their senses, yet, at the same time, feel­ing for the par­ents who must be exhausted.  I lis­tened for what their 5–7-year-old sales pitch would be to passersby:  “They’re deli­cious,” “Will that be one box of Thin Mints or two?” or the clas­sic “They freeze well.”

Instead, I heard “GERTA, WATCH THIS!”  A thud against the glass door made me look up from the books I was sort­ing behind the counter.  The lit­tle girl had slammed her behind against the door and yelled through the glass at the cat, “HEY, FURBALL, BITE THIS!”  She pro­ceeded to accen­tu­ate her point by hook­ing a thumb toward her bot­tom.  On one hand, I was shocked that a five-year-old could sound like a middle-aged taxi dri­ver, but I couldn’t help but laugh at the clever way she had cho­sen to mimic the adults around her.  The cat, on the other hand, kicked her rear leg back over her head and cleaned her­self.  Evi­dently, she was not impressed.  It’s not easy sell­ing Girl Scout Cook­ies to a cat, but that’s def­i­nitely not the way to do it.  Then again, lit­tle girls are basi­cally just kit­tens, aren’t they?