IIIIIIIIIIITTTTT’S GIRL SCOUT COOKIE TIIIIIIIIIIIMEEE!!!  Have I purchased any Girl Scout Cookies in 2024?  Of course.  I bought two packages of airplane biscuits covered in chocolate that were named something like Treetop Sparkles Adventurama and S’moren’t You Glad You Support Little Girls in Their Understanding of Capitalism and Consumerism.  I don’t even know what I paid for those cookies.  Twelve dollars?  Forty dollars?  It doesn’t matter; how can anyone put a price on children earning tchoch?

Was I a Girl Scout?  Of course.  Before I was a Junior Girl Scout (4^th and 5^th grade) I was a Brownie (2^nd and 3^rd grade), which is a miniature Girl Scout dressed up in the color of overbaked chocolate BECAUSE SHE IS JUST CUTE ENOUGH TO EAT YES SHE IS.

Actually, I don’t know why they called them Brownies.  I wasn’t exactly a model Girl Scout – which we’ll get to in a minute – but I’m sure the good Girl Scouts can tell you why the little ones are called Daisies and the biggest ones are called Ambassadors and where the money from cookie sales go so as to help water our bitty flower seeds so they grow into confident women.

Speaking of confident women, my memory tells me that my mother was my Troop Leader throughout my Girl Scout career. 

(I just texted her and she said, “Brownies for sure.  Can’t remember after that.  And I was your Sunday School teacher.”  To which I replied, “That doesn’t matter in this context,” and she responded, “Well, I bought a ton of cookies, for sure,” which I guess puts it back in God’s court somehow.)

If you’ve ever met my mother, she is the least-believable and also most-believable Girl Scout Troop Leader possible.  Imagine the business-version of Sadie Shelton in the hit 1988 comedy Big Business coupled with your hippie great-aunt Butterfly who lives part-time on an ashram in a cave in Arizona and part-time in a dimension that can only be felt with one’s metaphysical soul and then put that person in charge of a Binder full of checklists and that explains why the two of us have generally voided this part of our mother-daughter journey from our memories.

Except, that is, for one thing.

“You got a lot of badges!”  My mom texted after the cookie thing.

“YES I DID,” I texted back.

“I had to set up all the things so you could earn them,” she wrote, referring to the Binder and also her lifelong sacrifices as a parent.

“Yep,” I replied.

My mother and I have a lot, a lot in common and so I feel confident in assuming that the reasons my mom signed me up for Brownies/Girl Scouts were threefold:

1. It had THEMED OUTFITS, and Silverman women will do virtually anything for THEMED OUTFITS.
2. It was probably advertised as something to BUILD CONFIDENCE, and my mom was/is a champion of BUILT CONFIDENCE.
3. The Girl Scout way of proving BUILT CONFIDENCE was through EARNED BADGES sewn onto THEMED OUTFITS – and, I mean…there is nothing better that an item of clothing showcasing all of the ways a person is awesome.  Ask the military.

(I don’t know why we don’t do more badges in cultured society.  Hockey Moms are virtually one clever tagline away from team-colored sashes already.  “Oh, man, look at her,” Hockey Moms would whisper to each other around the concession stand.  “She has her 6AM Practice badge AND her Packed Only Healthy Snacks badge.”  “Yes, but look at HER,” they would say, pointing to another.  “She also has her Didn’t Roll Her Eyes at a Cowbell Not Even Once” badge.”

“She is the queen of us all,” they’d nod, eating their breakfast popcorn wistfully.)

My Mother the Girl Scout Troop Leader’s Binder detailed the badges and pins to be earned, and the steps required to earn them.  It took me three nights to read the entire Binder, bookmarking the badges I planned to achieve.  How did I plan to achieve them while still accomplishing everything else required of a ten-year-old know-it-all, you may be wondering?  I picked the absolute easiest ones.  If a badge had three steps, and one of those steps was to tell an adult you were working on the badge, I earned that badge.  In three months, I had two dozen badges.  I was The Queen of the Laziest Girl Scouts.  My mom, who could not have given two craps about the quality of the badges I had earned because we were there to BUILD CONFIDENCE and confidence had been built, was thrilled.

The only badge I was missing, of course, was my cookie badge.  A quick Internet search tells me that midwestern Girl Scouts in 2024 can earn three badges (which I guess they call patches now): the Participation Patch, the Goal Getter Patch, and the Super Seller Patch.  Back in 1990, I, The Queen of the Laziest Girl Scouts, had my sights firmly (or casually) set on the Participation Patch.

In addition to BUILDING CONFIDENCE, I also learned a valuable lesson in entrepreneurship in Girl Scouts – specially, that I was Management Material.  My team of employees consisted solely of my incredibly cute and willing little sister.  I set up a display of cookie boxes at a table in my parents’ clothing store, stuck my sister in the middle of it, and hung out amongst the suits while the dollas rolled in.  We (but, really, Erica) sold the exact right amount of cookie boxes to be a Participant.  Badge earned.

I dropped out of the Girl Scouts the following year because I joined the Rock Tumbling Club and realized that you could polish a rock a lot faster than you could earn a badge.  My Girls Scouts sash sits in a memory chest along with my vest of sharpshooter patches and ten pounds of polished rocks from the driveway of my childhood home.  I’m always open to a new patch-and-sash adventure, especially if it comes with a Binder, and I always have a fistful of dollas ready for more Girl Scout Cookies.

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I realized I didn’t have a photo for this week’s story and so Kyle snapped this masterpiece. The box was empty.

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This week on North Dakota Today, we talked about free prom fineries and North Dakota’s hidden dining scene.. (Valley News Live)

Cavalier’s Eva Robinson just competed in her second Junior Iditarod Sled Dog Race in Alaska. (KFYR TV)

Lansford’s Lindsey Undlin spoke to Minot high school students about becoming a two-time published author. (KFYR TV)

Even more prom dresses!  These great college girls are taking in and giving out donations. (Facebook)

Kids in Minot got to try out adaptive curling thanks to Prairie Grit. (Minot Daily News)

Congratulations to Grand Forks’ Lauren Reardon, who smashed North Dakota’s single-game scoring girls basketball record with 61 points (the previous record was 49 points). (Grand Forks Herald)

Also as a reminder, Kyle and his friends, Corey and Kelly, have a podcast called North Dakota After Dark where they talk about youth hockey in North Dakota.  The latest episode is up and is an interview with Randy Lieberg about hockey rinks and Shane Reynolds about dryland training.  Check it out. Bonus: you can watch it on YouTube. (North Dakota After Dark)

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