Good Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
I’m not one to toot my horn. Aw, who am I kidding? I’ve got a blog and I’m not afraid to use it!
Way back in oh, February, Pumpkin Girl and I got our first Girl Scout Cookie sales experience. Pumpkin saw the pictures of the incentive prizes and set her sights on yet another plush toy. It required her to sell an obscene amount of over priced boxes of cookies. So we hit up all the usual friends and relatives and offered them the chance to buy cookies that would be donated to the injured troops at Walter Reed. Our
Brownie troop also collected donations for the soldiers during booth sales. All told, we ended up with 12 cases of Girl Scout cookies.
Which sat in my living room for a month. Then I moved them to the guest room just for a little while. They really were only supposed to be there for a couple of weeks at the most. Well, one thing led to another and oops, now we’re having guests. Hmm, better move those cookies. But here it is, hitting 98° already and we can’t just move the cookies out to the shed or the car. Hey, how about actually taking them up to Walter Reed for the troops! What a concept.
So off we went today, 12 cases of cookies, a Little Tykes wagon and a folding luggage cart all loaded up into the minivan.
We were quite the sight at the hospital. Philip, in uniform of course, pulled the wagon with half the cookies, Boo carried one box, Bip sat in his stroller holding another box while Pumpkin pushed him, and I brought up the rear, pulling the luggage cart loaded with the rest of the cookies.
It was pretty obvious what we were doing and we got a lot of smiles from people along the way. We found the soldier and family readiness center and delivered our cookies. They were very grateful for the donation. There were several family members waiting there and the staff was pretty busy, so we took just a couple of pictures and got out of the way.
About halfway home Boo and Pumpkin mentioned the soldier they saw sitting in a wheel chair. He had been coming out of the physical therapy wing while we waited for the elevator and he had said hi to Philip. One of his legs had been amputated. Philip explained that the soldier had probably lost his leg during the war. Boo said something to the effect of “Wow, war is a lot harder than I thought.” He was quiet for a moment. We told them that the soldier they saw and others like him were the injured troops that we’d delivered the cookies to.
Now honestly, I don’t want to pat ourselves on the back too much. Buying cookies for wounded soldiers is really a small thing to do.  Those injured soldiers and their families have such a long road ahead of them that it is easy to do a good deed. As an Army family ourselves, we have a soft spot in our hearts for our young troops and I wish there was more that we could do. But wasn’t it Mother Teresa that said, “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” She was right.
