“C is for cookie, that’s good enough for me.” — Cookie Monster

IRRATIONAL BRAIN: I want a pickup truck.

RATIONAL BRAIN: But you’re not a contractor. You’re not a plower. You’re not anybody that in any way can justify owning a vehicle like that.

IB: Yes, it’s true … where I come from, if you drive a pickup, your work justifies driving one. But, up here, everybody has one! In the North Country, it seems like every man with a beard and a Meatloaf album owns a pickup. And I fit that criteria!

RB: Okay, look … you own two vehicles: A Subaru and a 2010 Prius that still runs perfectly fine. Even though it doesn’t have all-wheel drive, with the addition of snow tires, that little Prius got you through last winter without a hiccup, didn’t it? You don’t need a pickup, man.

IR: C’mon, Jack … how long do you think that Prius is gonna last? You’ve changed the oil maybe twice in 14 years. It’s dinged, scratched, smells like mice, it’s missing part of a fender and sounds like an abused sewing machine. Besides, last winter in the Adirondacks was a piece of cake. Wait until a real Adirondack winter comes along. Then you’ll see, owning a Prius up here is like bringing a butter knife to a gun fight. Or like throwing Barney Fife into the ring with Mike Tyson … it’s insane! You need a pickup, man!

In the immortal and insightful words of Kurt Vonnegut: “And so it goes.”

The eternal battle between What You Need versus What You Want is an everyday conundrum. Who wins? For me, that depends on three things: Size of need, versus size of price tag, versus size of spousal approval.

If I can honestly agree with two of those (“honestly” being the key word there), I can justify anything. When I can only agree with just one, I try to walk away (“try” being the key word there). When it comes to my pickup, I cannot honestly agree with even one. And yet, I look for a “For Sale” sign in the window of every pickup I see. But as much as I want a pickup and love Meatloaf’s “Bat Out of Hell” album, that’s not what this piece is about.

This piece is about Girl Scout cookies.

Girl Scout cookies defy all logic. Just try to apply my “rules of temptation” to Girl Scout cookies. I dare ya. Need? Nobody needs Girl Scout cookies. Price? They’re not all that expensive. Spousal approval? My wife would shove an old lady to get some Thin Mints.

But Girl Scout cookies have four major things working for them that make them damn near irresistible. First, they’re for a great cause. Who can deny that an association dedicated to guiding girls into adulthood, especially today, isn’t one of the best places to donate your charity dollars? Second, they’re really good! Of course, everyone has their favorite, (mine are Do-si-dos), but there isn’t a dog in the bunch. Third, you can’t get them all the time. Some famous person famously said, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” In this case, absence makes the craving for Do-si-dos grow into a drooling, bearded maniac. And fourth, who can resist the Girl Scouts themselves selling those cookies with their homemade signs, uniforms and badges?

Given those four assets, no wonder “as of 2018, Girl Scout cookies have sold more than 200 million boxes each season for $800 million, resulting in approximately $600 million in net revenue for the Girl Scouts to distribute,” according to Girl Scouts of America.

That’s an astounding number. But compared to Ford’s yearly profit of $8 BILLION dollars from sales of its F-150 pickup truck alone, it doesn’t even compare.

But I have a solution. (You thought maybe I didn’t?) Let’s make a pickup truck out of Girl Scout cookies.

We’ll call it the GS-150, or wait … no. The Badger! (See what I did to you there?) First of all, the Badger would only be available for a short time each year, spiking demand tremendously. They wouldn’t be as ridiculously expensive as the competition. And they’d always be in good taste. (Place immature snort and giggle here.)

I’ll leave most of the design thoughts to the automotive engineers, but just a few things come to mind. Samoa cookies would make excellent wheels with their coconut and sticky goodness for gripping, like Caribbean snow tires. Of course, my Do-si-dos would have to be the steering wheels. That way, when you’re stuck in traffic or in a long drive-thru line at Burger King, just lean forward and take a bite! And maybe the whole body could be comprised of Trefoils, those oddly shaped underdogs of taste.

There you have it, friends and neighbors … the Girl Scout Badger. Of course, holding its own in a wreck might turn out to be a slight problem.

But that’s the way the cookie crumbles.