I was selling jewelry and shiny rocks in front of a local, independent bookstore. My table was up against an adobe wall. On the other side of the wall, two teenage Girl Scouts & their mom chaperone were selling Girl Scout cookies.

A man walked up to my table, and I said hello to him.

“Do you know what that woman is doing?” he asked me in an angry German (or maybe Austrian) accent while indicating the chaperone mom.

“What?” I asked, wanting the scoop.

“She is making children sell cookies that are full of sugar!” He went on to tell me that what she was doing was wrong, that sugar is not good for everybody. (I think he meant “anybody.”) He said she was wrong to make the children sell the unhealthy cookies and that he’d told her so!

I wanted to ask him if he’d never heard of the tradition of selling Girl Scout cookies as a fundraiser, but I’ve learned not to get into discussions with fanatics.

Then he complained that the chaperone mom was blocking the sidewalk so folks had to pass right by the table with the cookies.

I told him I thought the restaurant they were set up in front of had given them permission to be where they were, and he said, “Money talks!”

Did he think the Girl Scouts were giving the restaurant a kickback on their shameful sugar earnings?

At that point, I knew there’d be no reasonable discussion with the man (and probably no bracelet sale either), so I busied myself tidying up my table and made noncommittal “I heard you” noises in response to everything he said until he went away.

Perhaps he should write to the Girl Scout national office and propose Girl Scout carrots, Girl Scout cauliflower, Girl Scout cabbage and Girl Scout cantaloupes. Would you patronize a Girl Scout produce stand?

Images courtesy of https://pixabay.com/en/thin-mint-homemade-grasshopper-food-182858/ and https://www.pexels.com/photo/abundance-agriculture-bananas-batch-264537/.