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00:36 - Tuesday, Mar. 11, 2003 Girl Scout Cookie Time I spent the majority of my childhood in the Girl Scouts. Yep, me, your favorite gay feminist Texan. We were part of the Circle T Council in Texas. I went to Scout camp, sold cookies, helped with craft bazaars, sang weird songs, earned (but never received) badges, and in general spent a lot of time with a huge group of girls who wore the same outfit at least once a week. Mom was a troop leader and big sis was a Bownie, then a Junior, and then a full-fledged Girl Scout up until some time in Junior high when they all turned into petty fascist Divashits and my sister was the odd girl out. My memories: 1. The Girl with Obscenely Long Hair who won the Girl Scout cookie sales award each year. I think she got a stuffed raccoon or some poly-filled skee-ball prize of a toy. Her mother evidently worked somewhere where her colleagues powered their lights, bodies, and brains on Thin Mints because she sold 4.2 billion boxes each year. 2. Some girl named Angela with too-feathered white white hair pinched me more than once. It hurt. 3. I got poisoned by a wildflower I was sucking on as part of my acting gig at Girl Scout Camp when me and two of the other siblings (girls from the older sister troop) were rehearsing a dance to "Ease on Down the Road" from that smash hit movie, The Wiz. At first I thought it was the heat of the costume or something from jumping off the stone fireplace in the lodge (I was the Cowardly Lion). Then I realized, that I was one taffy stretch of a fragrant sting from my lip to my gut. I wish I had puked on either the girl with obscenely long hair or Angela, but I did not. 4. Our neighbors were perplexed when they saw me at their door to sell them soap for the girl scouts. I lied and told them my sister was home sick. I couldn't explain she was just shy. I remember the soaps being photographed like they were superclean bars of chocolate. 5. The best cookies, hands down were called "Hoedowns." Peanut butter on a cookie, covered in chocolate. Here they are called "Tagalongs," but of course I always accidentally see or speak the word as "Tagalogs." Maybe someday they will come out with a Filipina cookie and they can call it that? So one of the kids at work sold me 10 boxes. Yep, that's right, 10 boxes for $30. Do I have that kind of money? No. But she's cool and damn, the girl scouts were so good while the boy scouts were out there parading their homophobia that I just had to give up some dough when I had the chance. I for one was in a dysfunctional boy scout troop as a kid. I hated that shit. I was stuck with boys from school who did not like me and I did not like. And I had to pretend I gave a shit about whittling. Yes, me and my fabulous self whittling. "Look Dad -- A misshapen toothpick with a pompadour!" I swear that was the kind of shit I could pull off. It should be no surprise that making a racing car out of wood for the "pine box derby" did not rock my world. Jesus Friggin Tickle Me Elmo the pressure was astounding. My dad was so damn patient as I did my best to make something about as aerodynamic as an early model Pinto that I insisted on painting a shimmery gold -- me in my baby blue Roller Disco shirt with the iron on glitter-covered red-wheeled skate. It actually ended up being ok, and I am sure I scored some points with my super-engineer dad, but I was really happy when my foul mouth got me kicked out of some lady's car and the scouts and when the boys in junior high put me on the damn prayer list at their fascist right-wing WASP church for being a dirty toilet-mouth when I knew one of them was fucking a girl down the street since age 12 each afternoon before his paper route and that the other both snuck his dad's copies of Playboy and hid his Marlboro Reds in a cut out of the wall inside his closet. Yeah, that's right -- I'm the bad kid. I hope that Angela girl from the Girl Scouts married one of their sorry asses and now pinches them in public and quite regularly. Activist Article of the Entry: Jimmy Carter's thoughts on the Bush War
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