Girl Scout Cookies: As American as Apple Pie

And suddenly March appears, and the sun feels warmer and the plants begin to blossom, forcing mothers everywhere to crack open the kitchen window and let in the sweet smells of pre-spring.

“What stinks?” asks the boy.

“Just the flowers,” I tell the boy. “And the Thin Mints.”

“Thin Mints?” he asks.

“Yep” I say. “The Thin Mints have arrived.”

It looks to be a good harvest this year, with boxes of Girl Scout cookies everyplace you look, in trunks and briefcases and lunch boxes, a cookie that for a week or two every year takes over the American palate, the American checkbook, even the American car.

“Where to now?” my lovely and patient older daughter asks as we head off to make another delivery.

“The Wammacks,” I say. “Seven boxes.”

And she leans forward the way beginner drivers do, checking this way, then that, then this way again, then that, just to make sure the coast is clear. Because when you have a trunk full of Girl Scout cookies, you don’t want to take any chances.

“I think it’s clear,” I finally say after two or three minutes.

“OK,” she says, slowly pulling out onto the road, careful not to jostle her precious cargo.

“Why are we going so slow?” the little girl asks from the back seat.

“To protect the cookies,” I say.

“Oh,” the little girl says, her mouth full of Tagalongs.

Of course, the cookies probably don’t need such caution. If ever a baked good could survive an air drop, it would be a Girl Scout cookie.

They are marvels of engineering, cemented together with peanut butter and toasted coconut or caramel. When stacked side by side in a box, they are stronger than brick. You could build a driveway with them.

“This way?” my daughter asks, slowing at an intersection.

“Yeah, this way,” I say, opening a box of Trefoils.

It is a rite of spring, these cookies, an American tradition as fine as July 4 picnics and Thanksgiving football, a food so sweet and rich and crunchy that it seems to affect the economy.

On the day after the cookies arrived, the stock market surged 212 points. By the end of the week--as Asia struggled and Brazil collapsed--the nation’s output soared to incredible and unexpected levels.

How did economists explain it? Sugar, they said. And chocolate. Some peanut butter. Plenty of caramel.

“We should send them abroad,” I tell my daughters.

“Send them what?” the little girl asks.

“Overseas,” I say. “Girl Scout cookies should be a major export. Like corn.”

“Whatever,” says my older daughter, focusing on her driving.

“Can I open another box?” the little girl asks from the back seat.

“Sure,” I say. “But that’s the last box.”

But it’s never the last box. We have a trunk full of them, for our friends, for ourselves.

It’s never quite clear how many we buy to keep, until I see them sprinkled around the house like poker chips, in their little poker chip trays.

The boxes seem to be everywhere. In cupboards. On the counter. In bedrooms. They seem to be all over America.

“I think we’ve bought too many,” I told my wife a day after they arrived.

“It’s only 40 boxes,” she said.

“Forty boxes?” I said.

“They go fast,” she said.

“Forty boxes?”

I used to sell them at work, dozens and dozens of boxes, carried from the parking garage to the office, in sturdy carts that usually carried computer equipment. If I worked quickly, I could get them all inside the building in two or three days.

Now, instead of selling a ton of boxes at work, we just buy and eat a ton of cookies ourselves, then sell a few dozen boxes to the neighbors. It’s easier. And the uses are almost endless.

One guy I know puts them in his earthquake kit. Another guy throws Thin Mints in a blender and makes mixed drinks (“a little creme de menthe, a little rum,” he says).

“And Girl Scout cookies freeze well,” the order sheet reminds us in big blue letters.

“Maybe we can use them as ice cubes,” my older daughter says.

“Maybe we can use them as meat,” I say.

Which makes them wonder if Girl Scout cookies really could be meat.

“Dad, cookies can’t be meat,” the little girl finally decides.

“They may have to be,” I say, knowing this shipment of cookies probably blew out our food budget for the week.

“Which way now?” my older daughter says, leaning forward at the wheel, looking this way, then that.

“Take a right,” I say.

In the trunk, the last few deliveries of Girl Scout cookies shift around. Purple boxes. Yellow boxes. Orange.

In the back seat, the little girl polishes off her last Trefoil. Somewhere, a basketball game is on, and I’m spending two hours delivering Do-si-dos.

“Can I open another box?” the little girl asks.

“No,” I say.

“Just one?” she asks.

“OK, just one,” I say.

Chris Erskine’s column is published on Wednesdays. His e-mail address is chris.erskine@latimes.com.