What the Girl Scouts Taught Me
“Girl Scouts prepares girls to empower themselves and promotes compassion, courage, confidence, character, leadership, entrepreneurship, and active citizenship through activities involving camping, community service, learning first aid, and earning badges by acquiring practical skills”. — from the Wikipedia page on The Girl Scouts of America
Before I was a Girl Scout, I was Brownie in a town called Carmel, Indiana, a sleepy suburb of Indianapolis. I had mostly positive experiences. The troop leaders’ family embraced all of us children. The troop leaders’ daughter was someone I looked up to. We were the same age. She was tall and smart and brave enough to enter the Spelling Bee, even if it meant she’d be teased for being a nerd. I chose not to enter because I was afraid of the judgment of my peers.
Because hey, there will always a few nasty girls. Once a fellow Brownie said to me, “You are a real Brownie because you’re brown.” Don’t know why she said that and snickered. I am assuming an older sibling or a parent taught her that nastiness.
Anyway, it stuck with me, but I don’t mean to harp on that shit — which is also brown, incidentally.
In Brownies, I discovered how the other kids lived. Many of their moms often took part in Brownie afterschool meetings. My mom was busy working on her feet at a crappy retail job. A job that she would often say she had because she wanted to get employee discounts at luxury retailers. She felt a need to say this so she could put on a good face in front of the Indian community in Indianapolis, a community that was incredibly status-conscious.
However, the girls in Brownies and their moms were not status-conscious. We had fun: raking leaves, building campfires, and eating S’mores.
I think one of my favorite memories from Brownies was when we did a puppet play. One week, we made the hand puppets for our upcoming production of “Sleeping Beauty.” When we arrived at Brownies the next week, there was a stand with the cut-out window thing. It was for putting on a puppet show in the Troop Leaders’ basement. All we had to do is duck in the back of the stand and voice the characters from “Sleeping Beauty.” I think the puppet play may have been the first play I was exposed to. And it stuck! As a young adult in Chicago, I ended up doing more than 10 stage plays and touring nationally with a theater company.
My roots, though,were as a clam. I was painfully shy in elementary school (up until fifth grade when I discovered tomfoolery, buffoonery, and class clownism; I may have even invented the last of the three). As I shared in this essay, I was a Cooties-kid, the kids who were segregated at recess for having the contagious ailment of Cooties. So many elementary school misfits are often carriers of this condition (unknowingly to them).
But here was my chance to shine: When the troop leader asked, who would like to read the lines for “Sleeping Beauty,” only a few of us were bold enough to raise our hands. When I got picked, some of those nasty girls snickered again.
But then I took the stage — behind the cardboard cut-out, that is. And I did a high-pitched voice, which the kids first laughed at. As I moved through the story, I added inflection and texture and nuance. I was the goddamned Meryl-Streep of Brownie puppet plays. (I’m kidding.) But alas, on that day, I truly felt like a star. Like I could stand-out in the pack.
Yup, Brownies empowered me. It wasn’t until I grew older, and I had to quit Girl Scouts, did I feel the loss of what an empowering experience it was to work alongside other young girls. We got to carve pumpkins, go on hayrides, drink spiced cider, make Holiday ornaments, bake cookies. Whereas at home, we got to play with cheap toys and eat Indian meals and go to parties with other Indian kids who hated being surrounded by other Indian kids. All of us being compared to one another for our academic achievements.
At Brownies, I got an immersion course in Americana. It helped me acclimate to my adult life. For almost half my life, I lived in Chicago, and lesbians in the Midwest do love to camp. They think of it as a getaway. I think of it is a go-away: I got this from my mother. I remember when she came with the Brownies for a weekend camping trip. She said she didn’t go number 2 all weekend because she couldn’t stomach the latrines. My poor out-of-place Mom.
Once, at an afterschool Brownie meeting, she did get some time to join the hive of Moms. She brought Indian clothes and jewelry and talked about our culture. She told everyone how her name meant “good-natured,” and my name meant “dream.” One girl was named Julie, which is also a name in India. All the girls then wanted to know what their names meant — how I enjoyed being revered by the not-so-brown Brownies.
But at Brownies, we were not all so different. We were learning how to be young women. Part of the experience is not being shielded from reality. And lucky me, I got a healthy dose of that as well.
Once I got to be Girl Scouts’ age, my mom took me to JCPenny to buy a Girl Scout uniform. She told me to stand by a clothing rack. From a distance, I witnessed my mom tuck the uniform into her shopping bags. Then she grabbed me and walked out. That’s when I learned we didn’t have the money to buy a Girl Scout uniform — the fancy green acrylic garbs that came with their own dupatta — or sash.
Later in life, I learned my mother had a bit of a shoplifting problem. She got help and quit. Phew! So I really am still unsure to this day if we were too broke for that pretty green Salwar Kameez that Girl Scouts don, or if my mom was just a bored stranger in the Midwest.
Because my parents constantly argued about finances, so much of their actual financial picture remains a mystery to me. Were they suffering from self-comparison to other Indians in our community, or were they really broke?
Another thing I learned late in life is that my parents borrowed money from the Girl Scout Troop Leaders’ family once. So…the reason I actually quit Girl Scouts was most likely not because the dues were too high or because my mom wasn’t available to carpool. It was most likely due to the shame my mom and dad felt about borrowing money and not paying it back. (Oh, btw, once your parents pass away, you get carte blanche to spill their secrets. Not really. Mostly, I feel shame for sharing this.)
The Girl Scouts, which I was told I couldn’t take part in because of high dues, taught me that not all things are clear-cut in life. The Girl Scouts taught me about society and its ways, about appearances and about hardships, about empowerment and shame, about courage and about showmanship. And yeah, so I’d say these green girls have accomplished their mission as “Girl Scouting builds girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place.” I hope I am still one of those girls.
