Girl Scout Cookies Turn Me Into the Cookie Monster

 I'm not saying that I suddenly grow blue fur, or that I throw fistfuls of cookies at my mouth, spraying the countryside with crumbs as I masticate, nor do I use such quaint expressions as, "Me want cookie!"  No, a more debonair and urbane Cookie Monster, I, a Cookie Monster of some restraint and breeding.  Were I to transform into a Werewolf, I would still shave and eat with a knife and fork; I would probably just chase squirrels more often.

Nancy, on discovering all the Girl Scout Cookies are gone, will regard me with a squinty eye and say, "I only ate three cookies, and we had four boxes."  This seems an exaggerated claim, but I have no basis for challenging it because I have no idea how many cookies I've eaten.  When I open up a box of Samoans - I understand they prefer to be called, "Indigenous Islanders" - a gray mist rises before my eyes and I fall into a sort of trance.  When I come to, I'm sitting on the couch, clutching an empty box, a halo of cookie crumbs scattered around me, my breath reeking of coconut and milk chocolate.  A terrible emotion, not remorse, but a species of loneliness and desolation travels over my frame.  Nancy gives me an expression like Macduff saying, "All my pretty ones - o, hell kite, did you say all? - All my pretty cookies in one fell swoop?"

You need to understand, other cookies do not have this effect on me.  Even as I write this, we have a container of Oreos in the pantry.  I've eaten more than my share, I'm sure, but I've spared them in the main.  Unless Nancy has polished them off, they are there yet.  I can say to myself, "Do I want an Oreo?  I can have one if I please; I can eat the entire bunch."  But my hand trembles not, it is steady as ever; my gaze is steadfast and sure, and while I may get an Oreo cookie later (or three Oreo cookies; I never eat cookies one at a time.) for the moment I am content.

Part of the problem may be the diabolical way Girl Scouts package their products.  Thin Mints come in two long plastic sleeves.  Take four cookies out - only a man of iron would take only one - and the sleeve seems forlorn and sadly deflated at one end.  Like a sock before you push your toes all the way down.  Take four more cookies, and what a parsimonious number you have left.  Really, you can see that finishing off the rest of the sleeve would be doing it a favor.  No one wants to open a box of cookies and find such a decimated remnant. But then, there's another sleeve of cookies rattling around in a box, a box clearly designed for two sleeves.  The remaining sleeve seems lonely all by itself, doesn't it?

Next thing I know, I'm stretched out on the couch in a Thin-Mint daze and Nancy's quoting Macduff at me.  But I can't help it.  Girl Scout Cookies turn me into the Cookie Monster.