You know what I don’t get? Girl Scout cookies. For real, I always figured it was a mutually agreed-upon feeling of guilt that went from “Oh you poor thing, walking around the neighborhood all day” to “Oh you poor thing, sitting in front of the grocery store all day” to “Oh you poor thing, you have this weird fixation with having your child ‘win the day’ so you are here at work harassing me with this order form” that drove sales. That and the horror stories I would hear from friends who had been through it, the stultifying compunction to sell, sell, sell! beaten into these poor things from a laughably, sickeningly young age.

But then there is the internet and even IRL* friends, and every year/biannually during “cookie season” there is this rush of high-fructose nostalgia that singes the nostrils, “OF IF ONLY I WEREN’T ON A DIET I COULD EAT THIS WHOLE BOX OF TAGALONGS.”

Straight dope though? That shit sucks. How long do you think those things have been around, how chemically preserved and colored and flavored must that shit be to sit in trays in cellophane in boxes in minivans in crates on pallets in semis in warehouses for EONS ON END before they can be distributed by this weird army of micro green berets, tugging at your very heartstrings? You are better off with the Keebler elves, for sure.

*Do you see what I did there???