Troop Zero and the modern Girl Scout

It’s the most wonderful time of the year — Girl Scout cookie season, and as a first year leader, I’ve been thrilled to watch my kindergarten and first grade Daisies annihilate their goals.

At first, I kept things modest: participate and sell one box, I said, and I’ll get you a fun patch to put on the back of your vest. I was the kid who never earned any of those rad Council incentives, even the easy ones like a pencil topper or a hair clip, and I knew how much of my Daisies’ successes rested on the willingness of their parents to sling Samoas.

But the girls plowed right through that goal. And they quickly sold enough boxes to cover the money I’d spent starting up a troop — buying art supplies, paying for a CPR course, and purchasing badges shaped like daisy petals which symbolized the values of the Girl Scout law. When they sold 90 boxes each, I promised them, we could all go to Build-a-bear and have a Girl Scout themed party there. They’ve flown past that marker, too. At the beginning of sales, I promised — not really believing these five- and six-year-olds would achieve this — that they could throw a pie in my face if they sold 125 boxes each, the number our troop needs to meet to get a bigger slice of cookie profits.

Right now, with just weeks left in the first phase of our sale, we’re only a few dozen boxes away. “We’re going…