I’m No Girl Scout
But I was a troop leader
People who know me know I’m no Girl Scout. Well, I was a Brownie in elementary school, with my little brown uniform, beanie cap, and sash with badges sewn on. I don’t remember the meetings, but I do recall singing at the end of the meeting:
Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.
But that was the end of my scouting career because we moved to a new town, and there wasn’t a troop there to join. I don’t believe I ever missed Girl Scouts because once I got into junior high school, only the nerdy girls were Scouts, and I was too popular for that!
So, what possessed me when my daughter, Sarah, was in sixth grade and wanted to be a Girl Scout to agree to be the troop leader? What did I know about scouting? The requirements? The bureaucracy and procedures?
The first thing I did was find a co-leader. If I was going down, I wasn’t going down alone! Bonita, who had a daughter, Kamilah, in Sarah’s class, said she’d be willing to help out. Bonita and I spent days piecing together a plan for activities, merit badge projects, and a schedule of once-a-month meetings. The Girl Scout organization has a very definite process for earning badges — which we didn’t follow. In our scouting world, if a girl showed up and participated in the activity, she earned a badge. Neither Bonita nor I had the time to meet weekly and urge the girls to proficiency.
But we did do some fun activities with the girls. One month, a work friend of mine, originally from Europe and who spoke seven languages, spent an evening with the girls teaching them how to say hello and goodbye (and some other phrases the girls thought of!) in French, Spanish, Italian, Turkish, Greek and some other languages I don’t remember.
Another month, on a school day off, I had arranged for us to go to the courthouse and speak with a judge. The girls heard not only about the legal system but were warned about what happens to people who break the law. Then they went into the lock-up. I seriously thought about leaving one of the girls there!
One evening, we participated in a Girl Scout dinner at our elementary school, to which all the troops in the area were invited. I’m not sure now what the purpose of the dinner was, but they showed a movie from the 1950s about a woman’s role. The girls loved it, laughing at the expectations of a “Leave It to Beaver” mother who, clad in a dress, pearls and heels, cooked, cleaned and raised the children, welcoming her husband home with a cold drink in her hand after his day at work. Bonita and I gave our girls badges just for laughing and realizing how far women have come!
The piece de resistance, the coup de grace, the pinnacle of my scout leader career, was our camping weekend. I had received an invitation from another leader to join their troop at Jellystone Park in Canada. How could I deny my girls this experience? I asked the other mom, since I was a totally inexperienced camper if she would take the lead and help me through it. She was absolutely open to it — probably telling her girls that this would be a riot on a different level. She said we would be sleeping in RVs, and she would do the cooking at the campfire. My job was to just keep the girls safe and to make the coffee, which was OK to make on the stove.
We piled our girls into our two cars, and Bonita and I caravanned to the Jellystone Park in Ontario, where we met the other troop, already settled in. We piled into our two campers and got ready for an evening of campfire food, toasted marshmallows and scary stories. (Were their scary stories? I don’t remember, but what’s sitting around the campfire without them)?
I told the girls they didn’t have to wear their uniforms while camping. After all, I expected them to get dirty, sitting on the dusty ground. But the other girls and their leader all wore their uniforms, complete with green shorts! I’m sure they looked upon us as real losers!
The next day, Saturday, we did what everyone who goes camping does — we left the park to spend the day at Boblo amusement park! We drove to the dock, took the boat, rode the rides and ate park food, took the boat to the dock, and drove back to the park late in the afternoon.
The other troop leader was going to make dinner, but the girls wanted to get ready for “the big dance” that evening, putting on makeup and doing their hair. Again, I don’t remember the other troop doing that, but our girls were getting ready for anything the night might bring. (Since it wasn’t just scouts at the park, there were boys camping with their families).
Finally, the dance started, and all the kids had a good time. We moms (i.e., Girl Scout leaders) had a good time watching them. Actually, the best part of the evening for me was knowing that we were leaving the next day!
I consider my experience as a camp chaperone a big success. None of the girls got injured, fell in the lake (if there was one), and we all arrived back home in one piece!
But the best news of all is that Sarah wasn’t interested in Girl Scouts when she got into middle school, so my career as a leader, successful as it was, ended after that.
