STRANGER THAN FICTION: SCRAMBLING FOR COOKIES MY CUP OF TEA

Girl Scout cookies are more American than apple pie. I guarantee you could find someone who hates apple pie, but he won't hate Girl Scout cookies.

How could you? They come in every flavor from lemon to mint to caramel. There's even the traditional shortbread cookie for boring taste buds and fat-free cookies for the weight conscious.

Every year I wait to see a short person in a little green get-up standing at my door with a list. I take the list and consider the choices -- thin mints, fat-free oatmeal, thin mints, fat-free oatmeal. Thin mints. Gotta have 'em.

Must be nice to sell a product most people are dying to buy, even though the cookies are sight unseen. That wasn't my experience in the vacuum cleaner industry. With a green dress and cookie sign-up sheet, I'd have been unstoppable.

Anyway, when the Girl Scouts asked me to be in a their Media Cookie Scamper, how could I refuse? The information sheet said I'd have to run through a maze made of cases of Girl Scout cookies, grab the boxes at the end, run back, dump them in a grocery cart and then take the trip again. If I won, all my cookies would be donated to charity.

After I committed, the cold fingers of doubt grabbed me. What was a width-impaired person like myself doing agreeing to run in public? What if the other media people were short and skinny like the television chicks? What if I had a heart attack and collapsed on top of the cookie pile?

It was a lose-lose situation. If I won the scamper, everyone would say, "Plenty of practice, obviously." If I lost, everyone would say, "It's amazing she could even fit her rear through the maze."

No, I'm not paranoid. It's the voices. The voices, I tell you! AHHHHHHH!

The Other Half slapped me out of my hysteria and agreed to attend the event to cheer me on. His lifelong dream is to be a winning coach of some sport, so he started looking at the course, estimating how fast I should make each leg and telling me how many cookies I needed to grab in each trip.

They gave me a number -- 272 -- to pin to the back of my shirt, just like in a real marathon. But unlike in a real marathon, they gave me a cardboard nametag, cut and colored to look like a Girl Scout cookie, for the front of my shirt. I have both tags on my desk to this day.

They send conflicting messages.

I was next to last in line for the scamper. Dayton "Sure It's My Real Name" Stone from KYRX was first, followed by some other radio guys, a television girl and some public relations folks. I was easily the person in line most likely to eat the maze.

Watching six people make the course before me, I pretty much knew only two trips were possible, so why bother running after that?

The number to beat was 23 boxes. I collected 21 in two trips and was panting so hard the announcer offered me her water. Now that's bad. It was apparent many long hours of training lay between me and next year's Cookie Scamper.

But I can't start until the cookies come in.

~Heidi Nieland is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.