The other day a young girl and her mum came into the shop to talk to me about a fundraiser for the Girl Guide Jamboree. (The Girl Guides are what the Girl Scouts are called here.)
Before long I was chatting away with the two of them and telling them about my time in the scouts.
When I was a young girl my mother decided to enroll me in the local Brownie Troop.
It turned out this young girl was also a Brownie but I would never have guessed as she was wearing a stylish, baby blue polar fleece with a small, tasteful Girl Guide emblem on it.
"In my day," I began, "we had to wear awful poo brown dresses with an orange neck tab, knee high socks and a brown beanie." (The uniform might as well have had the words "please bully me" sewn onto the back)
"I've read about that in our book," the girl said.
I imagine it was under a chapter titled, "Embarrassing uniforms from a darker time."
I recalled how our meetings seemed to focus on housekeeping and baking. Meanwhile, the Boy Scouts next door were doing much cooler stuff like crafting bow and arrows and determining azimuths.
The girl's mom said that the program had changed and it sounds like things have become a bit more progressive.
"We built a catapult once," the girl told me.
"I sewed a button onto a bit of cloth," I said.
At least one of us did something cool in their childhood.
To be honest, the thing I remember most about my time in the Brownies was how mean, nasty and cliquish the other girls were.
The worst of all of them was the troop leader's daughter, Jamie.
When I spoke she would smirk and mock me. The other girls could be nasty too but she was the queen.
I asked the young girl if they still did camping trips. They do.
"I bet it's nice to camp in New Zealand where there aren't any dangerous animals about," I said.
On one of our camping trips we slept on the covered porch of a scout building and in the middle of the night something started crashing around in the woods and the troop leader got on the radio to call the park ranger.
I was terrified.
I just knew it was a big hungry bear and there we were, all laid out in our sleeping bags like a sandwich platter.
Being totally immersed in Christianity at the time, my first thought was to appeal to the higher power.
Dear Lord, please don't let me eaten by the bear. If someone has to go could it please be Jamie? She's so mean. Please God, let the bear eat Jamie so we can become closer to you as we mourn her loss. Amen.
There were times when I did enjoy the troop meetings and I fondly remember when we all graduated from Brownies and did a "bridge crossing" ceremony where we became Girl Scouts.
Jamie's mom, who had always been kind-if a little oblivious to her daughter's meanness, cried and said she was proud of all of us.
"You'll come and visit when it's time to sell the cookies right?" I asked the girl.
She promised she would.
Before long I was chatting away with the two of them and telling them about my time in the scouts.
When I was a young girl my mother decided to enroll me in the local Brownie Troop.
It turned out this young girl was also a Brownie but I would never have guessed as she was wearing a stylish, baby blue polar fleece with a small, tasteful Girl Guide emblem on it.
"In my day," I began, "we had to wear awful poo brown dresses with an orange neck tab, knee high socks and a brown beanie." (The uniform might as well have had the words "please bully me" sewn onto the back)
"I've read about that in our book," the girl said.
I imagine it was under a chapter titled, "Embarrassing uniforms from a darker time."
I recalled how our meetings seemed to focus on housekeeping and baking. Meanwhile, the Boy Scouts next door were doing much cooler stuff like crafting bow and arrows and determining azimuths.
The girl's mom said that the program had changed and it sounds like things have become a bit more progressive.
"We built a catapult once," the girl told me.
"I sewed a button onto a bit of cloth," I said.
At least one of us did something cool in their childhood.
To be honest, the thing I remember most about my time in the Brownies was how mean, nasty and cliquish the other girls were.
The worst of all of them was the troop leader's daughter, Jamie.
When I spoke she would smirk and mock me. The other girls could be nasty too but she was the queen.
I asked the young girl if they still did camping trips. They do.
"I bet it's nice to camp in New Zealand where there aren't any dangerous animals about," I said.
On one of our camping trips we slept on the covered porch of a scout building and in the middle of the night something started crashing around in the woods and the troop leader got on the radio to call the park ranger.
I was terrified.
I just knew it was a big hungry bear and there we were, all laid out in our sleeping bags like a sandwich platter.
Being totally immersed in Christianity at the time, my first thought was to appeal to the higher power.
Dear Lord, please don't let me eaten by the bear. If someone has to go could it please be Jamie? She's so mean. Please God, let the bear eat Jamie so we can become closer to you as we mourn her loss. Amen.
There were times when I did enjoy the troop meetings and I fondly remember when we all graduated from Brownies and did a "bridge crossing" ceremony where we became Girl Scouts.
Jamie's mom, who had always been kind-if a little oblivious to her daughter's meanness, cried and said she was proud of all of us.
"You'll come and visit when it's time to sell the cookies right?" I asked the girl.
She promised she would.
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