ShareThisShovel the walk, save your change, and say goodbye to those weight loss resolutions.The Girl Scouts are coming.Just in time for our New Years' resolve to wane, America's favorite mass-produced and colorfully-packaged cookie with a cause is back on the streets and ready to satisfy those thin-mint cravings. And this year, they're more digital than ever.Girl Scout Cookies have their own website, girlscoutcookies.org. They have their own official MySpace page, myspace.com/girlscoutcookiesale. But a thorough search of both sites will reveal the same result -- nary an order form or online payment option.Officially, according to the party line, you cannot purchase Girl Scout Cookies on the Internet. It's right there in the FAQ, with the suggestion that you try the website's zip-code cookie finder instead.Enter your zip code, provide an e-mail address, stipulate that you would not like to receive Girl Scout mailings thank you, and you'll be redirected to a local troop's webpage where, after navigating through various broken links and photos, you will find the location of the nearest shopping center cookie table, all in the time it would take to order twelve boxes of Tagalongs from eBay.Wait, wait, wait. Ordering cookies from eBay? Who would stoop to this? Worse still, who would sell Samoas at auction? Very few people, actually.Most sellers list them with the "Buy it Now" option.Though it is explicit Girl Scout policy that cookies not be sold online, some intrepid little girls with broadband connections are peddling their Peanut Butter Sandwiches through eBay at street prices. Or, more likely, their shameless parents are selling them in proxy. Either way, the spirit of the enterprise is being sold in the process.Though the organization claims that safety is their main concern (in a thorough misunderstanding of how the Internet actually works), the Girl Scouts also note that selling the cookies is meant to be a face-to-face learning experience. The virtues of "goal setting, money management, and teamwork" are also extolled.Of course, selling cookies isn't exactly the pavement-pounding community experience it used to be. Again in the name of safety, fewer and fewer Girl Scouts venture door-to-door with an order-form in hand. These days, you're more likely to get a box of cookies from a table, placed conveniently at the exit of your supermarket, manned by adults and adorable Brownie Scouts in a two-to-one ratio.While an eBay page dedicated to Trefoils and Thin Mints may be alarming, this sit and shout trend has gone mostly unnoticed. As each year goes by, there's less reason to shovel the walk. The Girl Scouts aren't coming. They're waiting at a table.It's silly enough that "safety concerns" keep modern scouts away from the Internet; the fact that fear has reduced a much-loved tradition to a shift at a folding table is just embarrassing. The mission statement may be the same but the lesson has certainly changed.Fear of community and a foolish fear of technology aren't virtues. They do the Girl Scouts (and all children) more harm than good. And it's up to parents to set things right.Someday, with any luck, scouts will learn teamwork and salesmanship in a modern online setting. Internet buyers will keep the money local by supporting a neighborhood troop. And the supermarket table, like a Radio Flyer wagon filled with cookies, will be a thing of the past.(Ben Grabow writes for the young, the urban, and the easily amused. Contact him at thinlyread(at)gmail.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
The Girl Scouts and their digital cookie dilemma
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