Family Stories - Girl Scouting Part 5

Family Stories

Girl Scouting, Part 5

   My junior year of high school was interesting.  For one thing, it was 1969-70.  The world was changing around us.  One of the bigger changes was the use of recreational drugs.  While Monique and I did not indulge in such, so many of our friends were experimenting by then.  A large chunk of our free time during high school was spent in talking down people high on acid or uppers, and keeping them from being busted by school officials.

   Girl Scouting was infected with this as well.  I discovered this at a leadership weekend for our Council in the fall.  It was up in the mountains (and bitterly cold!) at one of our camps.  Because of transportation issues I was late and barely found space for my stuff in a cabin(?) filled with people I didn't know.  So I went in search of people I did.

   I found Shane and some of the others from her circle of friends.  Mostly not sober.  Shane had been taking "downers" and was clearly out of it.  Then a messenger came in.  The adults in charge had decided that they wanted to show us a video or something, despite the fact that we had all been released for the evening (it was around 8 p.m.).  Somehow we got Shane up and down the road to the main building.

   It had to have been such a shock to the adult leadership.  Here was the cream of senior Girl Scouting-and a sizable percentage of them were stoned.  They showed the video and then sent us back to our cabins while they decided what to do.

   While at the cabin I finally found out Shane's story.  Shane's parents were wealthy.  They lived in a mansion.  Shane and her younger siblings mostly lived upstairs in the care of servants.  The rules were very strict.  Father was a brilliant CEO and expected top marks and a good college followed by a good career and a brilliant marriage.  Mother was an old school socialite.  And she expected the same for her children, especially the girls.  Girl Scouting was the only real freedom Shane had.  And she only got to do that because she had argued that it rounded out her college application and gave her access to opportunities not otherwise available.  It was virtually impossible for her to have friends over.

   When Shane went to work for Camp Singing Pines after finishing CIT II, it was because the Camp director understood Shane's need for a place to stay.  She was a natural leader, smart, funny, all sorts of good things.  But because her family life was so restrictive, sometimes she choose to use drugs.  She laughed when she told me about it.  She would have preferred to drink, but her parents measured the liquor bottles.  Her mom never notices when Shane took some of her mom's depressants.

   The real problem was that Shane did not want to be, and was in no way suited for the life her parents wanted for her.  While generally graceful at everything I saw her do, she froze up and was clumsy when required to attend social functions with her mom.  She hated wearing the make-up, dresses, and such required.  Shane's kid sister loved all that stuff and Shane was glad.  It meant that her mother would have at least one daughter to follow her mold.  Shane just wanted to be herself.

   It came out that the reason for this weekends binge was a deal Shane had struck with her parents.  They wanted her to go to USC.  She wanted to go to a small school out of state that was really good for her major.  Her parents had agreed to pay one year's tuition at Shane's school of choice if she agreed to do the whole debutante thing that year-ball and all.  She had agreed to that deal.

   There were repercussions from that weekend.  Shane and several others either had to resign their leadership positions or show active improvement.  I think Shane got her parents to pay for therapy.  She got to keep her role at girl leader of Gam.  No one ever talked to me about any of it.  I guess having a leader who was a Council official helped.  No one from her troop could possibly have that sort of problem.  A lot they knew.

   That year, since I recognized my own lack of leadership skills with younger girls, I entered the Leader Aid program.  Another girl and I were assigned to a local Junior girl troop "to help out."  This was a troop for 5th grade girls from my elementary school.  Their leaders were nice enough, but no prior experience in Girl Scouting, or camping.  My partner and I knew that, most likely, unless something changed, that troop would probably dissolve in the next two years.

   The apex of the year was their camping trip.  Despite all the time we spent prepping, the girls forgot everything we taught them.  It was a lot of work helping them put up their borrowed (from Council) little tents.  And a lot of work helping them cook and clean up.  It was with great exhaustion that I finally collapsed into my own little tent.  Only to find out that the World's Loudest Cricket had decided to serenade me all night.  I couldn't find that noisy insect the next morning, which was a good thing for him.  When I got home I discovered he had hitched a ride home in my duffel bag.  I escorted him downstairs to the flower beds where he annoyed my neighbors.  Eventually he did find a lady cricket, because we had several generations of loud crickets after.

   I should mention Newport Dunes here.  The Dunes was a camping/water sports area open to the public as part of the back bay of Newport Beach.  The area was privately controlled, with security.  Our little area of Girl Scout troops would go for a weekend every year.  As the only senior troop in our area, our Troop pretty much ran the event.  Which meant Mrs. B3 ran the event.

   The year before, for her own petty reasons, Mrs. B3 chose Monique and I to make the ceremonial fire for Sat. night.  It had to be beautiful looking.  And as Mrs. B3, in her moment of glory, led the assembled girls in singing "Rise Up O Flame" (traditional GS song for the event) the two of us would enter from opposite ends, and with one match each, would light the fire.  Mrs. B3 was clear that she would tolerate no failure on our part.  I think she expected us to fail and planned on humiliating us.  She didn't know us very well.  We had the wood already.  We spent much of the afternoon looking in trash cans for the greasiest paper we could find.  When the others were fixing dinner, we carefully placed the greasy paper on the inside of our lovely structure (built according to regs), with one corner quietly sticking out on each end.  When the moment came, Monique and I lit our ends and stepped back.  The thing went up like a fireball.  I think the front row of girls had their eyebrows singed.  It was one of my pyrotechnic moments of glory.  We didn't get in trouble and Mrs. B3 never asked us to set up a camp fire again.

   But our Junior year we had a different adventure.  For several years now Monique had developed a pattern while at Newport Dunes.  After morning chores, we'd grab some lunch and go for a hike around the back bay.  We'd be gone for hours.  We always told our leaders where we were going.  And we were always back on time.  Mrs. B3 especially didn't like this, but there wasn't much she could do about it.

   But our Junior year Monique had a minor problem.  She had bought some trendy new underwear and it wasn't working out.  They were paper underwear.  There are good reasons why the trend was not successful.  Monique had several choices.  She could:  1.  Call her mom and somehow arrange for new underwear.  2.  Talk to our leaders about the problem.  3.  Go without underwear for the weekend.  or 4.  Hike over to the shopping center about half a mile away.  We, of course, went with #4.

   Monique and I were a good partnership.  She would think of amazing things to do.  I would figure out how to do them without getting caught.  She would get us started, and I would keep us going when she would start to freak out.  This adventure was no different.  After chores Saturday morning, while one of our friends distracted the gate guard, we calmly strolled out of the site.  We could see the shopping center, across some fields, so off we went.  Nasty weeds!  But we got there and even had time for a soda before Monique started to freak out and we needed to head  back.  We actually got back to site early, and had time for a quick walk around the bay.  I don't think our leaders ever knew we were off site.