Mad cookie season

It must be Girl Scout fundraising season again.
Girl Scout cookies are all over the map, multiplying like bunnies. The Girl Scout troops have stands in malls, door-to-door sales, and worst of all, parents bringing those dang forms into work and pointing them out to everyone they can grab the ear of.
I can just see the interactions in the women's restrooms of workplaces throughout the land. Some lady is fixing her hair at the mirror, and this disembodied, chirpy voice spurts out of a stall:
"Lydia? Oh, Lydia, is that you? I just want to let you know that Caitlin's Girl Scout troop is selling cookies again. The forms are in the lunch room."
Girl Scouts of America isn't just an extracurricular activity for pre-teens. It has to be a full-fleged business enterprise with marketers who have studied the concept of market saturation at length. The grass-roots advertising campaign for their cookies is nearly foolproof. Come on, they say, get someone to buy these cookies. It's fundraising. It's for a good cause. If you are a Girl Scout, or have one in your family, you are on the bandwagon. You can't help but be on the bandwagon. They have ways of dealing with you if you're not.
And once they have you, you are addicted. Thin mints, I am convinced, have nicotine in them. I can't stop eating them, no matter how much self-discipline I try to muster. Turkey sandwiches and salads take a backseat in jockeying for positioning in my stomach.
And I know I'm not alone. Once that first box of cookies is gone, you seek out that Girl Scout Mom at work and order some more. And she's only happy to enable your addiction. Four boxes? Five? How about some do-si-do's?
You think Hostess has a junk food empire? Girl Scout cookies put Twinkies to shame. Little Debbie isn't worthy to carry the merit badges of the Girl Scouts.
It's proliferation with sugar, and it's led me to a sad realization: Girl Scouts are contributing to America's obesity epidemic.
Second only to the fast food industry, Girl Scout cookies are carving a fattening niche in our society. They might be even more dangerous than McDonald's. Fast food restaurants can try to woo you with hamburgers and greasy French fries, but only Girl Scout cookies have pathos on their side.
Those cookie boxes are covered with smiling girls. Happy girls, broadening their horizons, learning new things, challenging themselves, becoming better people. Maybe one of these girls will represent your state in the Senate someday, the boxes seem to say. Maybe one of them will become President.
Don't buy the cookies? Well, that's just like saying you don't care about the future of 51 percent of the American population.
So you sheepishly offer up some cash to the incisor-less smile of that seven-year-old staring up at you. Come on, just two boxes? Make it three. It's for a good cause, after all.