Thursday, January 24, 2008

The trials and tribulations of being a "Cookie Mom"

Remember back when I decided I would volunteer to be the "Cookie Mom" for LO's Girl Scout troop? Well, it's Girl Scout cookie time and let's just say I must have completely lost my mind when I said I would volunteer to oversee all of this. At some point 145 cases of cookies have been in and out of my car and in an out of our house. That's 1,740 boxes of cookies! At $3.50 a box, that means I am responsible for $6,090 worth of cookies. Oy!

I was talking to the mom who has been the "Cookie Mom" for the past 3 years and she said, "You must be dying with all these cookies in your house!" Slightly offended I said, "Why? Does it look like we've been eating too many of them? " She replied, "No, because they are not kosher." I explained that the cookies ARE indeed kosher showed her the OU on the boxes and explained how we would not have been able to have them in our house if they were not kosher. ( As I was talking, I was thinking in my head, why am I telling her this, she doesn't care if she can tell if something is kosher or not.) She said, "Oh - that's good to know because it's a good selling point."

Later on I was telling PHD this story. We laughed because the assigned grocery store for our cookie booth is in a neighborhood that is predominantly African-American and chances were that being kosher would not be a huge selling point in the neighborhood. So, there we are all set up with our cookies outside the grocery store and who was our first customer? Yep - you guessed it, an African-American man wearing a star of David. Knowing our story, we were of course curious about this man's story, so PHD asked him about his star of David. His reply was, "We are all children of Abraham. I never leave home without my star." PHD and I showed him our stars as well and told him that we never leave home without them as well.

When we got home, I was curious about the whole "children of Abraham" thing so I searched on the internet and found this. It seems to be an organization trying to bring together Muslim and Jewish youths. Interesting indeed. See, you learn something new everyday.

My favorite moment at the cookie booth was when a woman came up to buy cookies and pointed at LO. She said, "I tried not to give her any eye contact but as soon as I looked at her little face, how could I say no to her?" I said, "Believe me, I know exactly what you mean." And I was not joking.

(p.s. Trepp, your cookies are on their way! I am guessing they are somewhere between Miami and Israel right now unless some customs guy decided he was hungry!)

4 comments:

Jack Steiner said...

In my house we are all children of cookie monster.

RaggedyMom said...

I remember when I taught in public school and was trying to cut down on noshing, and I tried to use the "no, I don't think it's kosher, but thanks anyway!" I was shown that OU, and the diet was history!

Kol Ra'ash Gadol said...

thank heaven I don't live near you guys. I'd probably be up to my eyeballs in thin mints....

Anonymous said...

Great story!!!

My son, when trying to avoid eating foods he didn't like at school, would tell the non-Jewish teachers that he was certain they weren't kosher.

End result: teachers learned how to decifer kashrut symbols ;)