I'M SHOCKED, I TELL YOU! SHOCKED!!

In this, the Age of American Childhood Obesity, I'm relieved to say I was not a fat child, because that adds an unneeded complication to growing up. One reason I wasn't fat is that I was simply too active. And I wish to thank the old-style Girl Scouts for helping to create in me an enduring belief that I move, therefore I am.

Why am I thanking the Girl Scouts? Because Girl Scouts sell cookies, that's why!

Every year I was a GS, I had to stomp miles, carrying boxes and boxes of cookies, knocking on door after door after door; keeping at it until every one of those boxes had been sold. Through rain, snow, heat, whatever -- I walked. And walked. And walked.

Of course, I ate Girl Scout cookies as well. But then, as active as I had to be selling them there was no way I could eat my way into obesity. I ate because I was really, really hungry. And when one is really, really hungry, Girl Scout cookies are the Bomb!

So, it was with a real sense of what? Concern? Amusement? That yet another paradigm has shifted? That I heard recently that Girl Scout cookies are now available online! This can't be so, I thought, while Googling away. You can't sell Girl Scout cookies without Girl Scouts getting out there and hustling the neighborhood!

Oh but you can. At  http://www.girlscoutcookies.org, where you learn that: "Every cookie has a mission; to help girls do great things."

What great things, I ask? Spend more time in front of a computer?

Poor, poor doomed American children. So much food, so few expectations of movement. After the Girl Scouts, who'll be next to tell you to sit down and keep eating?