I’d forgotten about the white gloves. Back in the early 1970’s, we Junior Girl Scouts did indeed wear them to complete our uniforms, with our official Girl Scout ankle socks and beanies. It wasn’t until you became a Cadet that you got to wear hose and heels and a smart beret, along about the time you had breasts to go with them. Happily free of all those encumbrances, we younger girls were able to throw ourselves wholeheartedly into trying to earn more badges than Philomena Scotch, who cheated and got away with it and faked her way to a fully laden awards sash.
She cheated on cookie sales, too. Back in the day, girls were actually expected to do their own door-to-door selling. Hers was the first over-achieving mother to elbow in and take over fundraising responsibilities. Would that mine had done so! Whether it were greeting cards or gift wrap or thin mint cookies, Philomena’s mother always made sure that she sold the most. I’d spend two angst-ridden weeks trudging hopelessly around town trying to sell the required ten boxes of 50-cent cookies, and Philomena would swan into our meeting with a list of 250 orders. It rankles me still, even after 40 years.
Such are the concerns of Junior Girl Scouts, then and now. Who did the best? Who just got a training bra? Who’s the teacher’s pet? Who did Scotty Joseph smile at in the lunchroom? Who has the coolest sneakers? Who snuck out of the house with pearly white lipstick on? Junior Girl Scouts do not dwell upon the carefully neutral political ideology of the Girl Scout organization. Why, then, are the whackos of Waco, TX, doing so?
John Pisciotta is the director of Waco Pro-Life and an organizer of CookieCott 2014, a drive to punish the Girl Scouts of America for their leftist commie secular liberal baby-killing agenda by refusing to buy peanut butter patties or tagalongs. Take that, you fiends!
I do love it when men busy themselves with our lady parts (she said, ingenuously). We’re not smart enough to handle these things of ours ourselves, you see. We need someone with a penis to take charge of our uteruses (uteri? Uteroes? YouTubing?). Waving a penis around must feel like wielding a conductor’s baton – “On the downbeat, ladies! My tempo, not yours! I lead, you follow!” Controlling our collective libido is no more complicated than conducting a concerto – just ask Mike Huckabee.
Leadership is what Girl Scouts is all about, these days. This cookie kerfluffle, spawning a sea-to-shining-sea boycott, began because the Girl Scout organization posted on-line links to articles in the national media about the inspiring female leaders of 2013. Some of these successful and influential women happen to support education and contraception and even personal choice. This renders their civic accomplishments null and void; they are godless harlots ready to lead 12-year-old girls to perdition.
Twelve-year-old girls don’t care about perdition. They find the facts of life utterly gross. They have no more interest in penises (peni? Peniles? Pennies from heaven?) than they have in calculus.
And the leaders they respect come from within their own ranks. In Adirondack Troop 214, Ivy Ostberger was the uncontested alpha dog. Yet she was no dog – she was pretty and popular and played the flute (of course). Life didn’t get much richer than that. She was ruthless in her power, though; never let it be said that a 5th grader can’t be a royal bitch. I played the violin and wore glasses and was the last girl I knew to hit puberty – I was no threat to her, except perhaps in having almost as many badges as Philomena (and I dutifully earned mine; my mother wouldn’t just wantonly sign my handbook).
That was enough to inspire Ivy and her cohorts to lock me in the putrid outhouse at Hidden Lake camp one night while they all went off to the council campfire ceremony. I can still hear them laughing as they stuck a stick through the door handle to trap me inside. I sat in the spidery dark for over an hour, until one of the assistant troop leaders found me. She laughed at my plight – she was Ivy’s mother.
That was about the end of my Girl Scout career. And that was the lesson I learned about leaders and leadership: The meek don’t inherit a damned thing. They get locked in the crapper and laughed at.
So good for today’s Girl Scouts for holding better women than the Ostbergers up as role models. The scouts publish a series of bland age-appropriate handbooks brimming with life lessons (none remotely abortion-related). Even those are under fire from Pisciotta and his one-trick-pony cronies. Says he, “the only person applauded who is pro-life is Mother Theresa.” Apparently, even her sainted presence can’t offset the pernicious influence of Geraldine Ferraro, Hillary Clinton, Betty Friedan and the like.
Get thee to a nunnery, girl.
You will think less of me when I report with no little satisfaction that, while Ivy went on to become a varsity cheerleader who dated handsome football players and lived the high school dream, she got pregnant before the end of senior year and wound up married right after graduation to someone who subsequently scandalously left her. That pleases me, even after all these years. The “Hold a Grudge” badge has always been one of my favorites.
I’ve been avoiding a pushy guy at work who’s been hounding us all to buy Girl Scout cookies from his daughter (or, rather, from him). Tomorrow, even though he acts like Philomena’s mother and looks like her in drag (she had a better moustache), I will seek him out and buy a bunch of boxes. No CookieCott 2014 for me.
Missy
Aah, I vividly remember the days of trudging through the slush, having doors closed in our faces as we attempted to sell our requisite Girl Scout cookies. Nothing builds character like a day full of rejection! The other day a Girl Scout mom posted on face book that cookies were in and to contact HER with our orders. Her daughter probably doesn’t even know she is selling cookies, and once again, the responsibility is on me to get the damn things. I think that “Hold a Grudge” badge is on my sash too.
I’ve decided, after reading over the Girl Scout Law, that I need to work on a “Let It Go” badge. I’m rather leery of the “respect authority” part, but I do like the last line, Sister Beth:
I will do my best to be honest and fair, friendly and helpful, considerate and caring, courageous and strong, and responsible for what I say and do,
and to respect myself and others, respect authority, use resources wisely, make the world a better place, and be a sister to every Girl Scout.
“The scouts publish a series of bland age-appropriate handbooks brimming with life lessons (none remotely abortion-related).”
When I first read this I read “now” for “none.” Even though I misread it, in fact, because I misread it, the girl scouts are publishing handbooks that are abortion-related. Shame on them! and their cookies!
Thanks for the cold Feb. a.m. laugh! I was a ‘brownie.’ Had a dime in my belt purse, for dues! Wow…it’s true about the mothers’ selling for their kids at work. (I’d boycott that one.)
OK, let us cut to the chase: it’s all about the cookies. If the Khmer Rouge was selling the cookies, I’d buy them. The shortbread ones, peanut butter ones, the chocolate mint ones, and the ones that are peanut butter covered in chocolate…which are the handiwork of the Diety that I want to follow. Mr. P-word should worry about the Bible-mocking purveyors of barbecued pork…wait, forget about that, too.
Ever eaten a whole sleeve of thin mints in one sitting, just like popcorn? I’ve not done this, heaven forbid, but I hear tell of such things.
Just googled your fabulous pseudonym. I’m jealous :-)
That pseudonym is something I learned from some Boy Scout badge or other, except it’s missing an “A”: “etaoins hrdlucm” is how I learned it.
And, yes, I have eaten a whole tube of Thin Mints at a sitting.
The ‘a’ in Etoin is silent and therefore invisible.
Full disclosure: I stole it from Pogo, the old comic strip. As a younger person, you will surely have to google that as well (?).
C’mon….let’s be truthful here. You mean to tell me that you’ve really never eaten an entire sleeve of thin mints in one sitting??! Trust me—it’s possible!! And so is an entire box of Samoas…those little bites of heaven that are full of coconut and caramel and chocolate. Jeesh—there’s only 12 or 15 in the entire box—that’s not even a challenge! hehehehe
I have probably eaten an entire box of thin mints by myself. I’m allowed to lie shamelessly, here.
I only buy Girl Scout cookies from Girl Scouts; and I buy a lot of them, double the amount after the boycott. For years we had a family in our neighborhood with two young Girl Scouts that went door-to-door with their mom, but they moved away. Now I have to buy them from booth sales in front of grocery stores.
BTW, plural of uterus is uteruses or uteri. Plural of penis is penises or penes.
Just messing around with pluralizers for reproductivish organses — wordplay rather than foreplay :-)
In Boy Scouts, we didn’t have anything as salable as cookies; I had to sell from a Tom Watts kit door-to-door. I don’t even remember what was in them, except I do remember there was a fire starter. I had exactly one customer — my parents, of course. Here’s a description from a blog: “The Tom Watts assortment was a veritable smorgasbord of useless crap. Oven mitts, spinning tops, toolkits…you name it, it was likely in that cardboard briefcase.”
I remember getting all excited about selling gift wrap and cards, as a personal fundraiser. Sent away for a starter kit, memorized the canned sales spiel, and then didn’t have the nerve to venture forth. Went back to $.50/hour babysitting, and gratefully.
I would have bought from that little Missy! I bought from a little girl at church, paid at the time of ordering, and am STILL waiting for delivery. But at least she did her own sales pitch. The Boy Scouts sell popcorn now.