This past Wednesday, having missed my MARC Commuter train into Downtown Washington, I had to take the DC Metro to get to work. Under normal conditions, it’s a 40-minute ride from Shady Grove to Farragut North but with Metro, it doesn’t take much effort for that to be an 80-minute ride. On Wednesday, it was a 56-minute ride…complete with 3 holdovers for schedule adjustments. While on the hour-long trek from the Montgomery County suburbs to Downtown DC, I was reading through old September 27 entries in Triumphs & Tribulations. One particularly interesting entry was the one from Triumphs & Tribulations IX. It was on this day, in 2009, that I was victim of a crime for which I have not yet received justice…or reparations. That brings me to this week’s moment in the Flashback Friday series: Aryn Mask and the stolen Girl Scout Cookies.
How I first came across this moment? It all started in the late afternoon hours of a Wednesday at Yokota Air Base in Japan. After stopping by the high school to pick up my order of Thin Mints Girl Scout Cookies from Latisha, I stopped by Adrian’s spot on base to hang out before going home. He was babysitting his daughter and she got hungry. I offered her a couple of my cookies but she declined. Adrian then decided that he wasn’t going to wait until his wife, Aryn, got back home to cook so all 3 of us headed off to the commissary in the Yokota Community Center. Before we walked out of the door, I left my Girl Scout Cookies on their dining room table along with my backpack. When we returned from the YCC about 25 minutes later, Aryn was home and was comfortably eating my cookies. I was like “Aryn, you ate my cookies?” to which her reply was “I thought these were AJ’s cookies”. After both me and Adrian playfully chided her over it, she said “well, they were in my house so I could eat them”. And just like that, it got real about my Thin Mints.
What it meant to me then? In the moment, I wasn’t really trippin’ over it. The Masks had always been gracious hosts to me so I didn’t have an issue sharing my cookies with Aryn. The thing about it though was that Aryn pretty much obliterated my cookies. There was only 1 left by the time we got back from the commissary. And then, adding insult to injury, Aryn threw out the “my house” line. At that point, it became a “you owe me $4 for those cookies” issue. Aryn maintained her stance that the cookies were fair game because they were unattended in her house…even though I only left them there because I couldn’t take them into the commissary.
What it means to me now? It’s been 8 years since the incident. Nowadays, I actually place protection on my Thin Mints on account of Aryn’s transgression. To date, she has not apologized or offered reparations for my stolen cookies. When I did the Cold Water Challenge 3 years ago, she was one of the 5 people I challenged…exclusively because of her crime. She never participated in the challenge. Even yesterday, when I reminded her of the incident, she laughed it off as if she was innocent. I’ll definitely square up with her on this one day. I will get my Girl Scout Cookies back.
