cast out your mints!

This is not going to turn into a diet blog, but, in addition to those announced in the comments of my original post, I've convinced someone else to sign onto the caloric-restriction cause, with a dialogue that included:

"I've gained [#] pounds and Girl Scout Cookies just arrived. My pants don't fit comfortably anymore."
"Throw out the cookies."
"But... Thin Mint!"
"You know what I say is right. Thin Mints are ephemeral joys, comfortable fitting pants a lasting pleasure."

She later sent me an e-mail titled "Fat Mints" that included:

I am on my way now to give all of the girl scout cookies away. I am embarrassed to admit how many boxes there are, but it will suffice to say that I have more than I can reasonably give to one person.

The spouse and I discussed my weakness for these particular types of cookies this morning on the way to the gym, and I think that perhaps there is a reason beyond my sweet tooth. When I was 9, I sold 750 boxes of them and I got to go to horse camp for free that summer. It was awesome - not just horse camp, but the little girl scout cookie business that my dad and I had going on. Happy memories.

Thus, when I see one of those order forms, I see my dad sitting in his blue mini-truck at the curb waiting for me to come back from knocking on the door and peddling the cookies. I see the living room packed from floor to ceiling with cookies. What I forget about that is that we were selling the cookies to others, not eating all 750 boxes ourselves.

It's interesting to think about how the Girl Scouts profit so much from the unhealthy eating habits of our nation. I wonder if they had started out selling Girl Scout Cigarettes and that had become the organization's dominant revenue source, how long the program would have kept going and what kind of rationalizations would have been used to defend it.

Anyway, now I need to get some people to enter into a writing pact with me as well. The last month of traveling and other distractions has been bad for all kinds of habits.