Last week I stood on the threshold of my front entry and handed a cute little girl from my church a check for $32 in exchange for 8 boxes of Girl Scout cookies. I don’t really need the cookies and I think anyone with any sense knows that their price is outrageous for the amount of cookies you get. So why do I buy them?
Nostalgia.
I buy them because they’ve been around for as long as I can
remember and they are part of my childhood.
I associate good things with them and they conger up good feelings and
memories.
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These days if I am ever asked where I am from/raised I
always tell people New Jersey. That’s
because New Jersey is where I grew up for the majority of my life and where I
graduated from high school. But if one
were to ask me where I spent my childhood I wouldn’t hesitate to answer
Minnesota.
From the time I was about 2 years old until towards the end
of my 3rd grade year we lived in a suburb of Minneapolis called
Minnetonka. To me it was a magical
place.
We lived in a three-bedroom ranch on a fitting piece of
property. Our house was on a hill
located 2nd from the bottom.
Over the garage was the biggest screened in porch that made the
mosquito-infested summers tolerable for outdoor play. My back yard had tall trees with one that had
little pieces of wood nailed about a foot apart creating a ladder of sorts for
climbing up it’s trunk. The winters
brought bounteous snowfalls that always seemed to come on Thanksgiving. The piles of snow my dad would make from
shoveling provided hours of entertainment playing “King/Queen of the
Mountain”. I loved everything about that
place.
One of my very favorite activities was riding my bike all
over the neighborhood. If I went to the
top of the hill and turned left I didn’t have far to go to get to my sister
friends Brook and Molly. I played with
those girls for hours. I wish I were
still in contact with them today. If I
went right, I’d eventually come to a little brown brick house on the left hand
side of the road just as the road began to slope down a gentle hill. In this house lived the man all of us
neighborhood kids affectionately called ‘The Candy Man”. On any given day you could knock on his door
and he would always have a treat for you.
I remember red rope licorice being the most common candy he would hand
out.
Around the time I was in 2nd or 3rd
grade my mom signed me up for Brownies.
While not full-fledged Girl Scouts, we still got the honor of selling
their cookies. I was so excited to do
this and proudly took my cookie sign-up sheet with the color-coded lines around
to each of my neighbors. I don’t
remember exactly how many everyone bought but I know most were willing costumers.
As I traversed the neighborhood my path eventually led me to
the doorstep of “The Candy Man”. My mom
was there with me and he welcomed us in after I told him my purpose for being
there. He asked for the sheet, filled
out his order, and then handed it back to me.
You can imagine my utter amazement and delight when I looked at it and
saw that he had ordered 30 boxes. 30
BOXES!!!! That was way more then anyone else had even come close to ordering and I was
thrilled!
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While I’m sure “The Candy Man” has long since left this
world his memory is forever etched in my heart and every time I eat a Thin Mint
I think of him. He is the reason why
every year I continue to buy Girl Scout cookies that I don’t need and that are
over priced. And he is the reason why some
day I will take an order form, fill it out, and hand it back to some little
unsuspecting girl in hopes that I will create as great a memory for her as he
did for me when she looks down and sees…………………
…… I have ordered 30 boxes.
1 comment:
a sweet post down memory lane. thanks for sharing. :)
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