The notice in the church bulletin was brief, who to contact if interested in a Daisy Scout troop, and that the Girl Scouts were soon celebrating 100 years.
I did the math, concluding I had been in seventh grade at the 75th anniversary. It had been a bitter cold day outside the state house, with some official remarks and I'm not sure what else, and we went inside afterwards. Someone knew someone who knew someone, and my troop ended up in the governor's office. She was out that day, and we each got a turn to sit in the governor's chair and have our picture taken. (Why hadn't I taken off my ski jacket?) How funny that my grandfather spent twenty-two years in the House as a Town Representative, yet it was the Girl Scouts that got me in the governor's office! Not that I had any ambition in that direction, but how many teenagers can say they sat in their state governor's chair?
I started Girl Scouts as a Brownie, at the tail end of second grade. After a school year commuting to out of town, my mom was looking for ways for me to have friendships close to home. The troop had already completed their community service project, so for me to earn the service patch at the end-of-year ceremony, I (with several grown-ups helping) planted flowers around the Mary statue at our church. Not that the troop had anything to do with our church, but planting flowers was a good Brownie Scout level community service project.
I continued with Girl Scouts through most of grade school, with a few different troop leaders, earning badges for the different activities we did: first aid, Green-Up Day, wild life interest, camping, ... A few summers I did a Girl Scout day camp, and later, a two- week over night camp for several years, swimming, horseback riding, singing, cooking over a camp fire, and grumbling when we got rained on. It was all a lot of fun.
I left Girl Scouts shortly after I flew up to a more senior level, where there were few still involved, and joined a troop with no one I knew. The troop leader planned a weekend camping trip with no provisions or regard to my needing to get church on Sunday. Strike one. The amount of work she expected us to do independently for our badges was beyond what I could manage; all the other girls attended public school, with little or no homework, while I attended Catholic school and had a considerable amount of homework. Unlike my previous troops, no actual badge work was done at meetings, so Strike two. And I didn't hang around for anything else. I moved on to high school and found other activities that fit my life.
Although my departure from Girl Scouts was on a low note, I enjoyed the many many other years and experiences as a Brownie, Cadet, and Junior. So much depended on the troop leader, and the early ones were terrific. Who wouldn't remember first aid after having real medical dummies sprawled on the school library floor? Or creating prize-worthy Fourth of July floats several years in a row? Or collecting $300 worth of returnable soda cans while filling trash bags and bags and bags of roadside junk on Green Up Day? (A precursor to Earth Day.)
Monkey1 has been watching older cousins in Girl Scouts and asking when she will be old enough.
100 years, and we could participate.
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