Apparently it's around the time for the Girl Scouts/Guides/whatever to go around selling cookies. But I could be wrong, I don't really care either way. But I was on STFU, Parents and there's a new post up about a mother posting on Facebook that her daughter is selling cookies and another woman is making a big deal about the mother posting it on Facebook, or something... I dunno (here).
I was reading some of them comments and there were people on both sides of the argument. Some thought that parents should leave the cookie selling solely to their daughters, and there were others that said that there was nothing wrong with parents letting other people know that there were cookies available.
I personally don't care either way. Selling cookies is apparently supposed to teach Girl Guides/Scouts lessons or something, I don't know how accurate that is because I sold cookies for years when I was in Girl Guides and the only thing I learned was that I hate fundraising.
Some of the commentors on that post shared some of their experiences with selling cookies during their childhood, and I'm going to put mine here simply because I can (it also may or may not have anything to do with the homework I'm procrastinating on right now).
I was in Girl Scouts from Sparks up to when I quit before my last year of Pathfinders (so that's from about age 5/6 to my early teens), so that's a lot of cookie selling and fundraising in general.
Let me just begin by saying that I did enjoy a lot of my time in Girl Scouts... when I was younger. But as I got older I had to deal with a troop leader who I did not like and who did not like me, and other girls who I wasn't really close to. I had maybe one or two close friends by the time I reached Pathfinders, but to get to that point I had to last through cliques, bullies, other girls who were nice but who I didn't really spend a lot of time with, and girls I disliked from school. I didn't always get along with the others in my group, probably because as I got older I began losing interest in the whole Girl Guide deal. I mean, we went camping once, and that experience was ruined for me because I had a cold the whole time and I was stuck on an island with a bunch of women/girls I hated/didn't like. The camping aspect was fun, but I could've done without the company and the cold. (Seriously, my brothers were in Beavers (Boy Scouts) and they went camping and they had loads more fun. Probably because their activities were more entertaining and their group wasn't made up of annoying teenage girls and two dumb leaders.)
We went to Ottawa once too, which was pretty fun, but mostly what happened on that trip was that my self-esteem died a painful death and I ultimately did not have a good time. (The Canada Day fireworks were awesome as all hell though, and we got to see Kalan Porter sing live back when he was popular.)
But yeah, cookies. The way we sold cookies in my area was that us girls were each given a certain amount of boxes of cookies and sent out to sell them door-to-door. Sometimes girls grouped together to sell cookies, or maybe that was required, I don't really remember. But I was usually paired up with my 'cousin'/bully/'friend'/whatever because we were close friends when we were kids (because I was a stupid child) and because our mothers were close friends. The way we sold cookies was that either my mother or her mother would drive us in a vehicle from house to house and me and my 'cousin'/etc would get out and go up to the door to try and make a sale. Sometimes my mother would come up with us, other times she'd stay in the car, but we mostly made the sales ourselves.
I don't remember there being any kind of competition about who sold the most boxes, and I'm pretty sure there were no prizes at the end. We didn't really get anything out of it unless the money was going specifically for a prearranged trip (I think we went on a total of about 3 or 4 of those, including Ottawa).
My father never took boxes of cookies to work to sell and we didn't use order forms so there was none of that to fool around with. But the whole thing was basically the girls selling the cookies with some help from the parents. As we got older, we were able to just go around from door to door for a certain number of houses and get in the car at the end of the street, or something (I live in a small town).
Ultimately, selling cookies didn't teach me anything, except that I hate fundraising. And that's mostly because we always went out during the morning in shitty weather lugging around boxes of cookies that probably weighed half as much as we did. As I got older, I dreaded cookie selling time, I was also getting fed up with Girl Scouts in general, and that was a combination of uninteresting (to me) activities and not liking the people i was with.
I had to make a poncho out of a fleece blanket two years in a row, and I fucking hated it. I mean, the first poncho wasn't that bad, I like making crafts and it was kind of fun, but it got annoying fast. Then the year after that, the troop leader had us make another one. I told her that we had already done one last year (she should know, she was fucking there!) and that I was not interested in making another one, especially since I didn't even use the first one. But she forced me to make it, so now I have two ponchos made from fleece blankets and I don't use either of them. I'm pretty sure I just stuck them in the closet on the day they were made and haven't looked for them since. I wouldn't be surprised to find that they've been eaten by moths, or something.
Thinking back on it, I don't have many good memories of my Girl Guides experience, especially from the later years. I'm sure it's good for a lot of people, but it just was not for me. I would've quit a lot sooner (probably in Guides instead of Pathfinders) if my mother had let me. But she was all like "You should stay for your Canadian Cord because it'll look good on your resume and [the other girls] are going to get it and blah blah blah". That's really the only reason that she didn't let me quit, never mind that I was bored stiff the whole time, never mind that the leader was a bitch and we didn't like each other, never mind that I hated most of the other girls and the ones I didn't hate proved to be pretty shoddy friends later on, apparently the Canadian Cord would've been worth all that.
Well, I quit before my final year so I never got my Canadian Cord. I'm not even sure what the hell that is anyway. I think it's some kind of award that the Governor General (or someone high up in the government) presents to you and there's a ceremony and all that. Big fucking deal, I don't have patience for all that. And then my mom finally got tired of my complaining and let me quit.
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