Yesterday some little kids were walking by the house as I was getting the mail and a pudgy little girl asked if I wanted to buy some Girl Scout cookies.

“Sure,” I said, thinking that a. cookies rule b. give back to the community and whatever.

She gave me the order form and asked how many I wanted. As I filled out the address, I told her I’d take 2 boxes. She fixed her gaze down the street, mulling something over, and then turned to me and said, “that’d be about twenty dollars.”

I turned and looked at her in disbelief. Surely she didn’t think I was ordering two trucks of cookies.

“No, two boxes. That’s all. According to your sheet here they are $3.50 per box. So that’s seven dollars.”

She looked away again, down the street, little gears almost visibly turning in her head.

“Ok, that’ll be about ten dollars,” she shot back.

I looked at her again, bewildered. It was possible that she was retarded. Or just really bad at math. I couldn’t tell how old she was. 9? A possible GS racket hadn’t crossed my mind yet. I mean, the Girl Scouts? Then again…she wasn’t in uniform.

“I don’t think so,” I said, pointing again to the sheet. “Everyone else paid $3.50 per box, so that’s what I’m going to give you. Ok?”

She stood there in silence, still looking down the street, searching for something to say.

I handed her the money.

“When will they get here?”

“February 22nd,” she said, walking down the stairs and already focused on the next house.

I hope she was in fact a Girl Scout.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 13th, 2006 at 2:58 am and is filed under happenings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.