My daughters are in Girl Scouts so, naturally, we’ve staffed a decent amount of Girl Scout cookie booths to fund different activities our troop does. In our area, cookie booths last two hours each and are coordinated both with the businesses we’re in front of and with other troops. We set up outside grocery stores and other high-traffic areas to sell the cookies for six dollars a box. The girls get to practice social skills (including accepting when people say no), practice math, and gain confidence.

Near the end of one cookie booth, a man approached our sales table.

Daughters: “Hello! Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies?”

Man: “I don’t want to buy any, but can I donate cookies?”

Older Daughter: “Yes, we donate cookies to deployed troops.”

Man: “And can I pay with a credit card?”

Younger Daughter: “Yes, our mom has a chip reader on her tablet.”

Man: “Wonderful. Fifty, then.”

My daughter rounded up as we’d gotten a few “keep the change” dollars here and there.

Younger Daughter: “Nine boxes! Thank you!”

Older Daughter: “My godmother is in the Navy, and when she was deployed, she loved having Girl Scout cookies and Boy Scout popcorn to remind her of home. Thank you!”

Man: “No, I want to donate fifty boxes.”

Younger Daughter: “Fifty boxes?!”

Older Daughter: “$300?!”

Man: “Yes. Good job with the multiplying!”

Me: “That’s very generous sir, so much that I want to be sure: you want to donate $300 worth of cookies?”

Man: “Yes, just like I said.”

Me: “In that case, I’ll ask you to bear with me. The donation section is only set up in one-dollar increments. I’m going to have to increase it manually for a bit until I get to $300.”

The man checked his watch as I furiously tapped the screen.

Man: “Almost done? The other troop was able to do this much faster.”

I paused very slightly in my tapping as I processed what he said, but I finally got to the total. He slid his card, wished us a good night, and walked off as we thanked him again. I turned to my daughters.

Me: “Did you catch that? ‘The other troop’? He donated fifty boxes already and just did it again.”

I don’t know how many times the man went around donating so much, but I’m glad my daughters’ booth was one of the ones he stopped at. They both reached their sales goals and a bit more by the end of that cookie season!

Related:
And That’s How The Kindness Cookie Crumbles, Part 5
And That’s How The Kindness Cookie Crumbles, Part 4
And That’s How The Kindness Cookie Crumbles, Part 3
And That’s How The Kindness Cookie Crumbles, Part 2
And That’s How The Kindness Cookie Crumbles

This took place in the summer of 1975. At the time, my sons were nine and seven, and they were in the Cub Scouts. Like most kids, they quickly made friends with the other kids, and as a dad, I made friends with the other dads that volunteered. Most of us got along well with the families except for [Mother] and her son.

[Mother] was extremely clueless about her own son and basically refused to parent him. She was more into the lifestyle of a mom, being in mommy groups, and spending her husband’s money rather than being a good parent to her son. The dad was a good person but worked a lot so he was absent. Their nine-year-old son, [Kid] was a NOTORIOUS BULLY. He was overly aggressive, he hit other children, he stole items, and he was extremely disrespectful toward other adults. When the other parents brought this up, [Mother] would make constant excuses for him.

Mother: “He’s just a boy! He’s just expressing himself! Your kids started it!”

What made it worse was that [Mother] would pacify her son’s behavior with sweets, toys, and other things that he wanted.

Because of this, the other parents and I didn’t invite [Mother] and her son to events that took place outside of Scouts. [Mother] would often call our home about getting sleepovers or having her son play with our kids, which we were adamant about not happening. If we didn’t give in, she said:

Mother: “You’re bullying my son by excluding him! How could you do that to a child?!”

She also threatened to call the governor for discrimination because she’s a baptist.

In late June, the other parents and I were talking about a beach trip to Santa Cruz and bringing our families with us. We talked through everything among the ten other moms and dads, planning this out. [Mother] must have overheard what we were saying.

Mother: “Can you take my son with you? I have to do something with my husband.”

Me: “What?! Where?”

Mother: “To Santa Cruz.”

Me: “Uh, no. You and your son are not invited. This a friends-only trip.”

Kid: “You’re a big meanie!”

He kicked me in the leg and ran away.

Mother: “Look what you did! Child hater!”

She chased after him.

Because this was a big trip, we decided to go shopping and hit the road on Friday. We had to do lots of shopping in bulk to reasonably feed twelve adults and eighteen kids.

My wife and I, along with four other parents, were watching the cars and keeping the kids occupied. For a brief moment, I turned my attention to my car to turn the air conditioning up cause my kids said that they were hot.

I turned back around and [Kid] was there with his bag and [Mother] was peeling out in her station wagon. We are all just in shock, asking ourselves, “Is this really happening to us?”

The boy’s mother had given him a note that listed his allergies and an emergency phone number. We called — no answer. We couldn’t leave the kid there alone and we were not going to bring him with us, so we opted to call the police. We put the kid in the car to keep him out of the sun, and we made the call. We report [Mother] for the abandonment of her child. They sent an officer out in about fifteen minutes.

As the other parents and I were heading back to the cars to wait for the police, we saw that [Kid] was pulling my four-year-old daughter’s hair. The reason why? The kids had some snacks in the cooler and didn’t want to share them with [Kid]; he didn’t ask them nicely, just demanded that they give him food.

As we ran toward the cars, ten of the boys pulled [Kid] off of my daughter and started to BEAT HIS A**! Now, the kids had two years of rage toward this kid bottled up inside, so what took place wasn’t surprising.

By the time we got there and broke up the fight, [Kid] was bleeding and crying. He called us all mean and started cussing us out and hitting things.

Kid: “I want to go on the trip! I want to go on the trip! I want to go on the trip now!”

He kept parroting this over and over again until I yelled at him to shut up, which only made him cry more. Now, I will admit I was probably in the wrong here. Maybe I should have extended some compassion, but my child was crying and being harassed.

The police arrived soon after and we explained what had happened.

The police took [Kid], and apparently, he was dropped off at his father’s job. [Mother] received a child neglect charge. When she saw that our kids had beaten [Kid] up, she tried to charge our kids for assault. It was dropped because it was self-defense.

This happened some years ago. I was one of the leaders at a scout camp for around twenty scouts, age ten to fourteen or so. One of the activities that we always have on any scout camps is a “night run”. This means we let the scouts go to sleep for an hour or two, and then after midnight, we wake them up with some kind of noise, ask them to hurry out, and then give them a task to do in the dark.

This camp was during the wintertime. Anyone unfamiliar with the weather on the Faroe Islands should just know that you do not want to sleep in a tent during this time of the year unless you are absolutely sure you want to catch a nasty flu. It’s just wet and miserable. All the scouts were sleeping in a long low-rise building with loads of rooms on either side of a long hallway.

This year, we wanted to make the night run about a murder mystery. The leaders responsible for waking up the scouts had borrowed a smoke machine because they wanted to fill up the hall with smoke. After it was full enough, they would make a huge amount of noise as if there was a fire and then chase all the half-awake scouts up.

The next part I was told afterward since my task was further away from this building.

The leaders had started to fill up the hallway with smoke, which turned out to smell like bananas. After just a tiny amount of smoke had come into the hall, the real fire alarm went off! The leaders got very surprised since they either had forgotten these alarms or they for some reason didn’t think this smoke would set it off.

But even more surprised were they when non of the scouts came running out. Not one! After opening some doors, they found out, that all of the scouts were still sound asleep, while the alarm was blaring away in the hallway.

The leaders had to personally bang on each and every door to wake up the scouts, who came out in a daze and acted like there wasn’t a fire alarm going. Even after they got out, the leaders found out that three or four scouts had just gone back to sleep! The leaders weren’t too happy about that.

Now, as I said, this happened some years ago, and the building was already at that point a bit old and needed an update. This update has since come for the whole campsite, and the fire alarm has also been changed for a better one. But I am very, very glad that this was discovered during a night run and not during an actual fire!

I am an adult leader for Boy Scouts. Every year, we knock on doors in the neighborhoods surrounding the church building where we meet to pitch our flag fundraiser. Homeowners pay us a fee and we put up flags in their yards during several holidays throughout the year, and then we remove the flags and store them until the next holiday.

We put flyers on doors the week before and then the boys go out — in pairs accompanied by an adult leader — on Saturday mornings starting at 10:00 am. The boys are instructed to ring the doorbell and ask to sign people up. If no one answers, they leave another flyer on the door and move on to the next house.

I am in charge of the fundraiser, so my name and phone number are on the flyers in case of questions. I get a call from a number I don’t recognize at about 10:45 am on Saturday.

Me: “Hello?”

Caller: *Male voice, gruffly* “I have a question for you.”

Me: “Yes?”

Caller: “Why would I be interested in your fundraiser today if I wasn’t interested on Wednesday?”

Me: “I don’t understand.”

Caller: *Volume increasing* “You left a flyer on my door on Wednesday and I threw it away, but then you came again and rang my doorbell and left me another flyer today.”

Me: “Well, the first flyer was meant to give a short explanation of the fundraiser and to let people know we would be coming to sign people up this morni—”

Caller: *Cutting me off* “You came too early!”

Me: “Too early?”

Caller: “Yeah. You guys rang my doorbell and woke me up! Don’t you know that people like to sleep in on Saturdays?”

Me: “I’m sorry that the boys woke you up. We do purposefully wait to start ringing doorbells until ten because—”

Caller: *Cuts me off again* “That’s still too early! You woke me up! And you woke up my son, who’s sick and needs his sleep!”

I’m a little worried that the son has some kind of medical condition and we’ve caused a problem, so I pause.

Caller: “And I’m not the only one! I’m looking down the street at your boys and nobody is opening the door for them! Everybody’s asleep at this hour! I went out and told them to leave people alone because everybody is sleeping!”

Now I’m more concerned that he yelled at my boys, so I’m a little worked up.

Me: “I must ask you not to harass my boys! I assure you that plenty of people are awake and happy to talk to us at this hour. We’ve been doing this fundraiser for fifteen years and we’ve never had a complaint that this is too early.”

Caller: “What are you going to do for me?”

Me: “What do you mean?”

Caller: “Your boys rang my doorbell and woke my son up! What are you going to do?”

Me: “I guess all I can do is apologize. I’m sorry. We certainly had no intention of waking anybody up or causing any problems. Honestly, though, we are probably not going to change our time next year on the basis of one complaint. Maybe you can give me your address for next year or you can put some indication on your door that you shouldn’t be disturbed if you—”

Caller: “But it’s too early! What do you think the police will have to say about this? Huh?”

Me: “If you want to talk to them, you know they can get in touch with me. But it sounds like we don’t have anything else to discuss. So once again, I’m sorry for waking up your son—”

Caller: “You woke me up, too!”

Me: “I’m sorry about that, too. Goodbye.”

He never told me his address. When the groups returned, I found out which one had had some dude come out and yell at them. They said they rang the doorbell, waited about fifteen seconds, and then left the flier.

They were on to the next house when they heard the car from the first house screech backward out of the garage, not perfectly straight, so it slammed right into the other car in the same driveway. The boys and adult leader stopped and stared, and then the man got out and started yelling at them — an adult plus a seventeen-year-old and an eleven-year-old — to leave people alone because people were sleeping. He then turned around and stormed into his house… leaving the cars.

It is 2005 and I am volunteering as an Assistant Scoutmaster for a Boy Scout troop. While we are at a summer camp, I am walking with one of the eleven-year-old first-year scouts. I am nineteen but I guess at his age, that seems really old.

Scout: “Mr. [My Name], do you remember the moon landing?”

Me: “Uh… that happened seventeen years before I was born, [Scout].”

Scout: “Oh.”