As a Girl Scout, I was not a success. Oh, I did a lot of the usual Girl Scout things. I wore the uniform, even to school, when the meetings were right afterward. (This was not a cool and popular look in high school.) I went camping and hiking. One summer, I was even a camp counselor. I learned the campfire songs and taught them to younger campers. I earned badges for esoteric pursuits and wore them on a sash. (Another reason the look was uncool at school.)

Trying to Push Cookies

What I couldn’t do was sell cookies—at least not well. Back in the day, we went door-to-door. (This is considered unsafe now for obvious, unsavory reasons. Nowadays, Girl Scouts market the treats by phone or online, or at tables outside supermarkets. (They would no doubt sell more if they set up their tables outside marijuana dispensaries.) I have a dealer who fixes me up every year. She’s the granddaughter of a fellow scout from my high school days. But I digress.)

My problem with selling door-to-door was that I had a sister who was also a Girl Scout, and with whom I went door-to-door. We split the orders, which meant that I got only half the orders I could have had without her.

Another way that Scouts got orders back then was to send the order forms to where their parents worked. The grown-up could then apply pressure to coworkers to buy. (This led to infighting. “You bought from Norma’s daughter, but not from mine.” But I digress again.)

My father, however, had a government job and claimed that he wasn’t allowed to pass around the order form. I now suspect that this wasn’t strictly true, and that he simply didn’t want to be the middleman.

As an adult, I have become a consumer of Girl Scout cookies, not a purveyor.

I Didn’t Learn My Lesson

My eptitude with sales has not increased over the (many) years.

I have written two books on the subject of bipolar disorder (gleaned from the writings in my other blog, Bipolar Me (www.bipolarme.blog). They aren’t selling well on Amazon. I get royalties from time to time. I’m saving up for a pizza.

I figure my choices for selling these books are:

A) door-to-door (That would be silly, not to say ridiculous. Well, okay, it would be ridiculous. There simply isn’t a neighborhood full of people living with bipolar disorder that I could canvas. But I digress some more.)

B) from a food truck or bookmobile-like trailer. (Same problem as with A. Besides, the price of gas would kill me.)

C) Facebook ads (I tried a few of them, to resounding silence.)

D) ask Dan to take orders at work (That would go over well. Not.)

E) have a website

I chose E. I found a company that would host a website—an online bookstore with my two books (and a third, when I finally write it). The site is called Bipolar World, and it lives at books.by/bipolar-world. Of course, the product is not as appealing as cookies (of the Girl Scout type, not the computer sort).

Maybe I should be pushing books AND cookies on my website. (I could call it the Cookie-Bookie Website, except then people would think I was taking bets on which cookies are the best. I’m pretty sure oatmeal raisin would lose. But I’ve digressed enough for this week.)