Once a year, like clockwork, I wish my wife and I had girls instead of boys.  And that time is now – Girl Scout cookie season – the escapist season of Thin Mints, Samoas, Do-Si-Dos, and, of course, Tagalongs.

It’s not just the cookies – they’re decent – who doesn’t love a peanut butter crème filled Tagalong?

No, what gets me is the throwback factor.  For about a month, the world turns into the technicolor town of Blue Velvet,

minus the oxygen masks and violent baby talk.

When I walk up to my local Safeway supermarket and see the card table set up outside with the half dozen or so little girls giggling in their scout uniforms, working up the courage to ask me if I want to buy some cookies, with their moms sitting proudly behind them, I feel like I’ve just walked into 1955 (again, minus the racism, chauvinism and McCarthyism, not to mention the flick of nature’s wrathful finger we all witnessed these last few days).

Earthquakes and man’s inhumanity aside, it’s like someone just dunked the world in scented bleach, and all the ickiness and devastating capriciousness ran off it.

I felt the same way when my son Gabriel and his friend Zach set up a lemonade stand across the street at the park.  So successful were these two budding entrepreneurs that they then baked cupcakes, put them on a rolling stand, and wheeled the stand through the park while some local band played awful Steely Dan covers.  They raked it in.  I encouraged them to raise their prices to a dollar a pop – supply and demand – but the little socialists stuck to 75 cents.

I’m not lost in nostalgia.  I just like to visit it once in a while.

I like cell phones, cars with good gas mileage, and Tivo.  But at the end of the day, a little girl excitedly selling cookies in a green dress with a sash covered in achievement badges?  Well, that’s wonderful.  I’d say that excited, open, unguarded smile, is worth four bucks a box easy.

And for god’s sake, tip these little folks – dollar a box minimum!  We have a duty here: for as long as we can, and as best we can, we must let these kids think the world is a charmed, benevolent place – which, once a year, at least, it is.