Brownie Drops Out

    Don’t you think it would be delightful to be a “Brownie?”  How pixie cute is that?  Imagine a sprite, a Tinker-Bell in brown with daisy-yellow accents, skipping hand-in-hand with other equally fashionable Brownies. The Brownie uniform’s signature hue:  warm milk chocolate with marshmallow extraordinaire! Charms for my bracelet would be so cute. 
     Highlighting my early ventures within a scouting career was the traditional Flying-Up Ceremony.  I reverently repeated the Girl Scout Pledge about honor and duty.  I gave the appropriate salute which permitted me to solemnly step across the little plank bridge that spanned the creek between the elementary school and our neighborhood. I had thus “flown-up” to be a Girl Scout! 
     Earning decorative accessories called badges and spending bonus time with friends created a perfect hobby during my youth. Our mommies helped us make craft projects, record family traditions, and bake cookies. We’d also make cakes topped with pink icing and design doll clothes, to complete each segment on the badge-earning quest. The mommies would then sew the symbols of accomplishment onto a diagonal swath of fabric, reminiscent of the Miss America sash, only green and glitterless, what a pity.
     All was progressing relatively well through the elementary years, earning badges at a breathtaking pace, selling thin mints and butter cookies, until I abruptly met my Waterloo:  It was time to go Camping.
      No outdoor event did I master; I was terrified of creepy, crawly, multi-legged varmints, hell-bent on my destruction.Let me explain my descent into Girl Scout Hell.
       The first outdoor event rounded up all the aspiring super-scouts, and me.  We crammed into station wagons and were driven to an undisclosed location where we were to earn our “wilderness cooking” badge, our “identify poison-ivy” badge, and our “tinkle in the latrine” badge.  I earned none.  May I beg the question:  If one has a nice stove at the house, actually inside the kitchen, why in God’s Name would you wish to cook a potato in the ground?
        When I was deposited at my front doorstep, I fled into civilization and begged for permission to QUIT.  That’s a 4-letter word to my family, so I was advised to persevere and do my best, for God, Country and Generational Pride. 
         The next outdoor test involved a songfest and a campfire in the sweltering heat of summer: mosquitos, bugs, spiders, and itchiness.  Shorts didn’t cover much flesh when Miss Muffet sat upon a (yikes) log, singing “Make New Friends but Keep the Old.”  Thus, bugs of unknown origin and species crept up my legs and I felt every step of their adventure northward.  I slapped mosquitos, brushed off bugs, wiggled and waggled, exaggerating each movement, exercising my practiced deep sigh of exasperation. 
           At long last and as an answer to prayer, The Ayatollah commanded, “If you are going to continue acting like that, just go inside.” Prayer answered! So, I went inside and helped wash dishes with lye soap.
          My “third time’s the charm” chance for earning the coveted badge was an overnight at the OK Corral, complete with indoor plumbing, cots with linens and a pillow, screened-in sleeping porch, plus s’mores.  All was going quite well until night fell. 
          Night quiet brings out spiders. They creep along, they squiggle up cot-legs and bound, unseen and unfelt, upon sheets covering those sleeping, peacefully unaware. Silently, stealthily, the spider crawls, taking his own sweet time to stretch his extra hairy legs, until he reaches his goal – my face.
         I threw the sheet from my body and the cot teetered. I bounded from the mattress, shaking my head, body, hands, and hopping from foot to foot, screaming “I felt it, I felt it! It was on my face!” Lights flicked on.  Other girls did the same, thinking they, too, had felt whatever “it” might be.  Drill Sergeants appeared, their hair in curlers covered with a shower cap. We all fell into silence. No spiders were discovered.  We were all told, “get back into bed, quiet down, and go back to sleep.”
         Who could sleep with Tarantulasaurus-Rex on the loose?  Within a few hours, the sunlight began to stream through the branches of pine trees signaling that the horrors of night had ended and breakfast was served.  Somebody earned a badge because the eggs sparkled with encrusted campfire ashes.
          Mother did not require many details after I spoke but one word:  tarantula.  She phoned-in my resignation. No attempt was made to dissuade me.  I simply drifted into obscurity as a Girl-Scout Drop-Out.