…to serve God and my country, to help people at all times, and to live by the Girl Scout law.”
BOOM! I can still say the Girl Scout Promise without looking it up after all these years.
Now the Girl Scout Law… that one I need to look up:
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.
I must admit, even after 13 years of scouting in my school days, I don’t live by the Girl Scout Law ALL the time. But reading it is a good reminder that we should just be nice to one another. It’s really not that hard.
Oooooh those bangs!
I loved Girl Scouts. While I didn’t love selling cookies, I did love crafts and camping and friends. Because Mama Dish saves EVERYTHING, here’s a picture of my Brownie troop. Can you find me?
It’s like Where’s Waldo, only everyone is wearing the same ugly brown and orange uniform. This might help:
There I am. In true first grade form, half of us are smiling, and the other half have no idea what’s going on.
As I got older, Girl Scouts brought me more opportunities, and bigger ones, too. I went to overnight camp for a week. A whole week! Away from home! I grew to love canoeing of all things, and eventually I would go away for two whole weeks so I could spend more time on the water. I even went to Minnesota where I canoed around the border lakes between MN and Canada. All because I was a Girl Scout!
Fast forward to the Grown-up Dish era, when I lived in Savannah, Ga… I weaseled my way into the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace, the home of JGL and the mecca of all things Girl Scouts. I convinced the folks there that I should be a tour guide and they even let me lead educational programs with the troops that would come to visit from all over the country. It was awesome! I tell people this now and they look at me incredulously like they’re going to ask me to hand in my “coolness card,” but it really is something that I’m proud of. I miss the folks down there at the Birthplace and it saddens me that I have NO pictures of them!
One part of the tour I remember quite well… when Daisy (that’s Juliette’s nickname) returned home from meeting with the founder of the Boy Scouts, she called up her cousin and said, ”Come right over! I’ve got something for the girls of Savannah, and all of America, and all the world, and we’re going to start it tonight!” Not too long after that, on March 12, 1912, she had assembled what would be the first troop of Girl Scouts!
A century later, the lesson is clear. If you’ve got an idea, go for it! I mean, it could be a dud. But it COULD be something that people celebrate for the next 100 years.
