The Girl Scout Cookie Chairman

Between 1963 and 1964, the year that I was a 10-year-old girl in Baltimore, President Kennedy was assassinated, the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan, I had foot surgery, the World’s Fair returned to New York City, my mother volunteered to chair my Girl Scout troop’s cookie campaign.

 My mother didn’t get involved in our school projects. She didn’t volunteer for the PTA or organize bake sales. She did belong to the League of Women Voters and on many a pre-dawn morning on election day, she would drag me and my four siblings to the local polling place to hand out flyers for Democratic candidates.

Juliet McLaren Carr wasn’t classically beautiful but she had style. Maybe a little too much style for my younger sister Jamie. Watching her come down the stairs dressed for parent-teacher conferences in a tight black skirt and stiletto heels, Jamie said “that’s what you’re wearing?”

I know now that the Girl Scout project was for my benefit. I was miserable and it wasn’t due to hobbling around on crutches for six weeks or adolescent hormones. My mother had remarried and I had a new stepfather, two new stepsisters, and a stepbrother.  Dinner hour was a constant battle for supremacy and often ended in tears, usually mine. The Girl Scout meetings were quiet and orderly, a place that was all my own. Each week when I entered the church basement where we met, I could forget about the tension at home for the next two hours.

 When the cartons of Thin Mints, Do-Si-Dos, Trefoils, and Peanut Butter Sandwich cookies were delivered, we stacked them up in the dining room. Each week, the girls of my troop would arrive to pick up cookies and drop off money. The girls loved my mother. She quickly learned all of their names and spent time talking with each of them, likely slipping in messages of female empowerment. She was even gracious with the parents, people she normally wouldn’t give the time of day. I watched in awe. Who was this woman?

 Whatever the rest of the troop didn’t sell, I did. Over spring break, my stepfather came home from his job at the Social Security Administration just before the lunch hour to pick me up along with several cartons of cookies, a card table, and a folding chair. Set up outside the main entrance as scores of government employees left the building, I made a killing.

 At the end of cookie sales season, our troop had sold more cookies than any other in Baltimore. Nobody was prouder than my mother. A perk of the top-selling honor was that our troop received a portion of the sales to spend on something fun. News about the upcoming World’s Fair in the Queens borough of New York was everywhere that year. My mother had been regaling me with stories of the 1939 New York World’s Fair that she attended as a child and our family already had plans to attend later that summer. We were excited to try the Picturephone, see Michelangelo’s Pieta, and eat something called Brussels waffles. It was, after all, a small world.

 When my mother suggested that we use the cookie sale money for a one-day trip to the World’s Fair, everyone loved the idea. The adults sprang into action. My troop leaders collected permission slips and recruited parents to chaperone, including one who was a registered nurse. My mother hired a bus to pick us up early in the morning and bring us back that night.

 All that was left was securing permission from the national Girl Scout council. They turned us down. “Too much liability,” they said. The troop was crushed but our disappointment was no match for my mother’s fury.

 “Goddamned Girl Scouts! I knew I shouldn’t have gotten involved. Probably all Republicans!”

 “it’s okay, Mom,” I said. “We still came in first. We can find something else to do with the money.”

 She refused to be placated.

 A few months later, the Girl Scout catalog arrived in the mail. On the front cover, four smiling Scouts, a Brownie, a Cadet, a Junior, and a Senior, stood arm-in-arm in front of the giant World’s Fair Unisphere.

My mother quit the Girl Scouts for good that day. I stayed for a few more years until teen center dances and boys lured me away. But the Girl Scout Cookie Chairman had hung up her sash.