Thin mint whore

Recently heard at a TMA meeting: “My name is AGMA and I’m a Thin Mint whore.”

I know. Shocking. But I bet I’ll get a lot of views because I used the word whore.

It’s been my dirty little secret. For nearly four weeks every year, for the past 55 years, I have given myself over to a life of Thin Mint lust and passion.

It started innocently enough back in the early 60’s when I did my first stint as a Brownie. That’s how they do it – they get started when you’re young. They let you “sample” the goods, teasing you with things to come, knowing full well that you will want more. Much more. And I did.

Then I started supplying; selling them door to door when I became a Girl Scout. Back in the day, there was no parental unit taking an order sheet to work and getting hundreds of boxes in orders so you could become the Cookie Queen. We were hard core. We walked miles and miles (okay, maybe five blocks) knocking on all the doors. And if we had what you wanted in the little cookie sacks we carried, fine. If not, you were SOL. Life was hard back then…

Thin Mints always sold out first. Duh. The addiction ran deep even way back then. At 50 cents a box, they were kind of expensive. But they could have charged two bucks a pop and people would still have snapped them up. Such was the desire for the Thin Mint.

I’ve never quite gotten over my Thin Mint obsession. It subsided in college and in my mid-20’s due to lack of access. But when I had kids, moved to the suburbs and started to work in a large office, it came back stronger than ever. I was smack dab in the middle of Girl Scout nirvana.

Imagine my delight when I found out that, in the intervening years between 1971 and 1984, the Girl Scouts went to an ordering system! No more door to door sales. Now I could order as many boxes as I wanted and NOBODY had to know.

I could bring two boxes home to the family, and only eat the occasional one or two cookies to make it look like I was in control. In the meantime, I had ten boxes stashed in my desk. In my prime, I could consume 1.5 boxes a day. They tasted good going down, but the sugar high was not pretty…. And there were always the telltale chocolate crumbles all around my mouth and desk. Pathetic.

I even had my own personal supplier. My BFF at work was a troop leader. I was in deep. Really deep.

A couple of times, I gave up Thin Mints for Lent only to devour two of the six boxes I had stashed in the freezer, at sunrise on Easter morning… I felt like such a dirty girl.

But like most of the 1960’s & 70’s head banging rockers who “overindulged” back in the day, I mellowed with age. I’ve come to understand the serious health risks of sending that much sugar and saturated fat coursing through my body. Plus my access is again severely limited. The nest emptied out in 2002. And with our move in 2006, I no longer work in an office or live in the suburbs.

I was adjusting to a Thin Mint-less life. My cholesterol and blood sugar numbers were normalizing. The sugar headaches had stopped. It was all going along great. I started thinking I’d gotten the Thin Mint monkey off my back until…. Until…..

I discovered the Girl Scouts had “pop-up” sales booths in our local grocery store. Right across the street. Oh the humanity!

But I was stronger than I was before. I’d started running and went back to school to become a Massage Therapist. I was eating healthier. I began traveling to countries whose citizens had never heard of Thin Mints.

For a couple of years, Girl Scout cookie time would come and go almost unnoticed. I would purposely avoid going to Kroger on the weekends when the little temptresses would be selling their seemingly innocent wares. Innocent my ass…

But old habits are hard to break. The least little upset in the Feng Shui of life can renew the old passions; latent desires. Like this past Sunday.

I saw a woman at church with some Thin Mints. She was delivering them to people who had ordered GS cookies last month. I wasn’t one of them. But the image of that green box started drilling down into my brain. Down to my very soul. I couldn’t quit thinking about them. Beads of sweat started popping out on my forehead. My palms got moist.

I was still feeling anxious and jumpy when I got home.

“I wonder if the Girl Scouts will be at Kroger today?” I too casually asked my husband. He got a worried look on his face. He saw that smoke of a distant fire in my eyes again.

Then, quite by accident, I discovered it. I couldn’t believe it. As much as I’ve bashed technology in the past, I take it all back. Technology is wonderful. And horrible.

There’s a smartphone app called (get this…) Girl Scout Cookie Finder. Download it, put in your zip code, and it’ll tell you the closest place you can go to get your fix.

Is that legal?

Of course, they were at Kroger. I got two boxes. They’re $4 a box now – I didn’t flinch as I handed over my $8. One’s in the freezer. The other box, minus six cookies, is in my body currently clogging my arteries and probably damaging my pancreas.

FYI, the six left over cookies went down the garbage disposal this morning. When the sugar high cleared, I came back to my senses.

I decided to strike a blow for clean living.

There might be hope for AGMA yet.