Missed connections 4
March 12, 2007
humboldt craigslist > missed connections > Thin mints
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Thin mints
Reply to: pers-292029517@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-03-11, 12:07AM PST
It is girl scout season and the world is full of girl scouts. Mainly they seem to be stationed at the entrance to the grocery store, where their mission is to twist around on one foot while tugging at their hats and blurting out “Hellowouldyouliketobuysomegirlscoutcookies!” at me every time I try to go buy vegetables. So far I have kept my wits about me, surviving by means of my tried-and-true defense against aggressive New York panhandlers (“Sorry, I’m not carrying cash”), but I know it’s only a matter of time before they get to me. Lately my strategy has been to attach myself to another shopper as they enter the store, matching their stride and walking a pace or two behind them, only to quickly disengage myself and slip unmolested through the door at the moment that my human shield is getting snared into buying cookies.
Today was different. Things seemed to be going off without a hitch; I locked up my bike and surreptitiously fell in step behind a shortish woman in a big woolly hat. As we moved within range of the door’s eight-year-old sentry, I tensed for the breakaway. “Hellowouldyou-” came the pitch, and then the woman in front of me stopped in her tracks. I had to skip to the side to avoid a collision.”I’m going to lay it out for you, one point at a time,” said the woman in the woolly hat. “A, your cookies are made with hydrogenated oils. No living being has any business ingesting these oils. These oils will give you coronary heart disease.” Her words were quick and sharp. I had forgotten about my groceries and was standing still, staring at her hat, which was still hiding her face. The girl scout and the girl scout’s mother also stared.
“B, there is milk chocolate, eggs, or another animal product in almost all varieties of your cookies. I happen to be a vegan. Do you know what that means?” She paused even though it was obvious that none of us was going to answer. “It means that your troop, your friends, and you are all directly responsible for the commercially-motivated torture of animals and the buildup of the greenhouse gas methane. Whereas I have chosen a better path.”
I was trying to crane my neck to get a glimpse of her face, but that hat was still in the way. This was clearly all somewhat beyond the girl’s comprehension, but she was getting the gist. Her bottom lip started sticking out and trembling.
“C, your cookies cost nearly six dollars a box. Ask me whether I would rather buy a box of your immoral and deadly cookies, or pay one and a half percent of my rent this month. Go ahead, ask me.” She made another one of those pointless pauses. “I didn’t think so. Ciao.” And she swept past, like a compact steam engine absolutely sure of where it was going.
Now, we all three kind of stood there for a minute or two, and I’m pretty sure that at some point the kid started crying, and her mom may have given me a dirty look – did she assume the woman in the hat was with me? Or did she just want me to have stepped in, somehow? – and bundled her daughter away to their car. I wandered around for the rest of the day like I’d been clobbered. This is a weird thing for me to accept, since it comes completely out of the blue, but here it is: I have never in my life been so aroused as I was during those thirty seconds in front of the doors to the grocery store. If you’re reading this, and you gave a third grader absolute hell today while wearing a big woolly hat, please write back. I am ready to be abused.
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PostingID: 292029517
