THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 10, 1997 TAG: 9702080038
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A9 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: OPINION
SOURCE: ANN SJOERDSMA
LENGTH: 92 lines
At the age of 10, Jean Gray had frizzy blonde hair, wore pointy-rimmed glasses and carried around a few too many pounds.
She was also nice. Sweet. So I was her friend.
Shy and quiet, Jean hid out in the classroom and was a disaster on the playground. I'd slam a kickball; she'd dodge it on the fly. But the girl had one hidden strength.
Jean Gray was a mean Girl Scout cookie-selling machine.
She sold hundreds of boxes of cookies. Literally, hundreds. By herself. Much to my dismay.
Camping out with Girl Scout Troop 1171 never appealed to me. But cookie sales? Then I was in my element. I couldn't wait to fill up my Girl Scout ledger, calculate total sales, hoof my boxes door-to-door, make change. Sell, sell, sell.
But always ahead of me hung ``the picture of Jean Gray.''
An only child, Jean lived across town with her divorced mother in a red-brick apartment building. Whenever I went to restock at the troop leader's house, Jean was there with her mom, loading cartons of cookies into the trunk of their old car.
One year I determined to top Jean's production and had my mom drop me off in the wealthiest section of town. People with more money are more likely to buy more cookies, my 10-year-old mind reasoned. Never mind that people with more money are also more likely to live farther apart from each other.
Jean Gray taught me about volume sales. Walking one foot to my 100, she canvassed her neighborhood's apartments, racking up orders. No adult could resist the soft-sell of shy, frizzy-haired, hard-working Jane. I couldn't compete. When she received the honor for top sales, I doffed my green beret with the rest.
The Girl Scouts' 69th cookie-selling season started in mid-January and runs through Girl Scout Week in mid-March. I would love to buy some Do-Si-Dos and Thin Mints from a Jean Gray somewhere, but it isn't easy to find one to take my order.
Presumably because of safety concerns, most Girl Scouts don't go door-to-door anymore. I used to see Girl Scouts at cookie booths in front of a Food Lion or in a mall, but even these few have disappeared. Now the only time I hear about cookies is when middle-age fathers try to sell me some at work.
Sorry, guys. Dad-delivered cookies don't taste nearly as good as the ones Jean Gray pulled from her traveling cookie case.
Had my father offered to help out, I'd have been mortified. But Girl Scout cookies have become a big business. The girls now get parental consent and undergo training in cookie-sales procedures.
At 10, I'd rather have walked barefooted to the camp latrine in the dead of night than sit through lessons in record-keeping, publicity, ordering, customer relations.
But today's enterprising scouts and troops have their own web sites: Young Alison Pfizer, for example, regrets to announce that she stopped taking orders Jan. 26. But the Girl Scout Council of Coastal Carolina, which represents 25 eastern N.C. counties, will accommodate me, if I leave my name, address, phone number, E-mail address and order.
I figure my county, Dare, is among the 25, but I'm not giving my Girl Scout soul to a computer.
There are 321 Girl Scout councils, with 160,000 troops, nationwide, and each one, I'm sure, would be happy to take my order. To give it a try, I called the Girl Scout Council of Colonial Coast in Chesapeake and left my number. Jennifer, a self-possessed, sweet-voiced scout from Troop 115, called me back. But had I become tired of waiting, I could've dialed the cookie ``hot line.''
How in the world did the cookie-selling machine evolve from a 10-year-old girl into a high-powered, mass-marketed, food-service conglomerate?
Recently Time magazine reported that 27 New Jersey troops, spurned by their area council in their demand for a bigger cookie commission, retaliated with a ``showdown'': The girls have vowed to peddle only the 12-box minimum. Seems the Scouts are getting a lesson in labor stoppage and hard-knocks economics, as well as ``leadership'' and ``teamwork.''
I believe in the Girl Scouts' message of self-reliance, self-confidence, resourcefulness and community involvement. Especially when it comes to selling cookies.
I think girls need even more opportunities in which to grow and excel, so that fewer will need the programs offered during Eating Disorders Awareness Week, which begins today. Or have to think later about ``parental notification.''
But opening doors requires knocking on them. I miss Jean Gray. MEMO: Ann G. Sjoerdsma, an attorney, is an editorial columnist and book
editor for The Virginian-Pilot.