I Used To Be A Girl Scout

When I was little, I was a Girl Scout. You might think Girl Scouts are all about tying bows and ponytails and making crafts and gossiping.. And you'd be mostly right. In my experiences in Girl Scouting, there was also lots of screaming, arguing, competing over who sold the most Girl Scout Cookies (the Catholic girl who was the youngest of 8 always won), and getting injured. Our favorite pastime was shrieking that we actually sold fifteen more boxes than Mary Jane and that she was a lying meanieface who should have her Good Friend badge revoked. All in all, it was basically like high school drama, but with more crayons and less stoners.



Not like real life.



I particularly remember one lovely summer day that we were going up to a camp-out in the woods. I was ecstatic at the opportunity to rough it and live off the land- I could go fishing, I could hike around the woods and be a dashing, daring explorer... I was pretty excited. Everyone else seemed to be less so, and I didn't know why all the girls had brought bug spray and swatters shaped like butterflies. Sitting in the car, I was next to a nice little girl whose name I can't remember at all. She was more tolerant than anyone should be of the bouncing little girl with the bowl-cut who was shrieking that she wanted to meet a bear.

I did not get to meet my bear.

In fact, I did not even get to go on a hike, nor did I get to go one step outside except between the condo and the car.

My innocent little heart was shattered as soon as I got out of the only hockey mom in the troop's car and saw the white stucco-ed building with huge windows and an old sign reading “Girl Scouts” and then unintelligible words. We were staying there? We weren't going camping at all. I was angrier than a bull in a china shop- actually, no, that bull wouldn't be mad at all. I was angrier than Michele Bachmann at a Socialist Convention. I stomped my feet and declared that I wouldn't go one step further until I got to get into a tent and go camping for real.



You don't think this can be messed up? Not even by burning? You're wrong.



I got picked up and brought inside and chastised for disrupting the troop, when all I had been doing is preaching the truth to the poor mindless lemmings who were all right with sleeping inside on a nice comfortable set of bunk beds. I wanted to rough it, and I would rough it or I would die trying. I was still trying to set up my sleeping bag on the roughest part of the floor when I heard someone call that s'mores were being made. Being a pretty chubby little kid, that cheered me right up until I ran to the voice and saw the most evil act that may have ever been committed. Hitler would freeze and cringe in shame. Stalin's knees would knock and the Joker would have to avert his eyes.

The s'mores were sitting in the microwave, as right in view of the window was a campfire place absolutely radiating an air of “use me! Light fires, right here!”. The s'mores were in the microwave, and I was sitting inside in an air-conditioned condo, listening to my troop call it a campout and talk about how they were so excited they were really camping.

I think I threw a plastic cup at someone as I sounded my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world. I was more intimidating than Reptar (or Godzilla, for those of you who had no childhood) to those poor troop leaders as I careened across the kitchen, decimating everything in my way and roaring the third-grade equivalents of obscenities at the top of my lungs. Needless to say, I was put in time out.

But sitting there and mumbling about how my individuality was being repressed, I looked out the window and discovered, to my delight, that sitting on the trash cans next to the door was a humongous racoon. This condo had a wall almost completely made up of windows, and so when I shrieked, “LOOK GUYS!! A RACCOON!” every last Girl Scout looked up and shrieked too. The difference was, I was happy and they were terrified.



How I saw the raccoon.



As I sat making cooing noises at the raccoon through the glass, I heard a huge crash and looked to see a wailing girl lying beside a knocked-over table, clutching her foot. She had apparently fallen backwards because of how scared she was of the very threatening small mammal behind panes of glass that really couldn't care less that she existed. Everyone started to fawn over her, and in an act of pure spite, I sat and talked to the raccoon for a few moments before running over and asking if she was okay.



How everyone else saw the raccoon.



She'd sprained her ankle.

At that point, I decided to quit Girl Scouts.

I still like these, though.