Sold!

The Girl Scout cookies have arrived. I was going to freeze most of them, since they won’t get eaten up very quickly, but my partner assures me it isn't necessary as they have the half-life of plutonium.

I like to support the Girl Scouts, having been one and having sold my share of cookies.  But what I really am a sucker for is a kid coming to the door selling chocolate bars, as I was required to do in high school to raise money for the music department.  The members of all the vocal and instrumental ensembles were sent out twice a year to peddle "one-quarter pound bars of the World’s Finest milk chocolate filled with whole, roasted California almonds,” as my pitch went and which I obviously have not forgotten.  The 4-ounce bars cost 50 cents each, but when asked how much they were, I always said "two for a dollar,"  which increased sales by at least 70 per cent.  (Today they cost a dollar apiece and are 1.67 ounces.)

Referring to our our having sold that awful chocolate every fall and every spring for four years, one of my fellow choir members wrote in my senior yearbook, “Don’t take any wooden candy bars.”

That turned out to be some of the best advice I ever got, because I never have -- and look at me now.