Hiking, hot-wiring minivans just a part of Girl Scouts

hkronmueller

Today marks the 90th anniversary of Girl Scouting in America.

I used to be a Girl Scout.

My favorite thing was our weekly meeting. Every Thursday after school we would sit around a table dipping sugar cookies in red Kool-Aid while we sang the song "I Need You Now" by the group Extreme.

Only instead of singing "I need you now, more than words can say, I need you now" we would sing "I'll feed your cow, corn and oats and wheat, I'll feed your cow." It all started as a joke because I love cows, but it quickly became a weekly ritual.

Every once in a while I hear the Extreme version on a flashback radio program, and it makes me laugh.

Being a Girl Scout was a big part of my life, even before I was born. I was destined to be one. My mom was a troop leader, and both of my sisters were Girl Scouts.

When I was born, my sister Jenn's troop gave my mom a baby blanket for me with bunnies on one side and bears on the other. Under each animal is the name of a girl in the troop. Even though the only name I recognize is my sister's, I still have it sitting in my room today.

On my dresser I have another reminder from my Girl Scout years.

It's a rock about the size of a coffee mug with a little green ceramic frog sitting on top in the middle of a bunch of flowers.

I got it on the last day of camp when I was 8 years old. (I only remember how old I was because it says 1987 on the bottom.) Our troop leaders told us to go outside and find a rock, so we hiked to a dried-up creek bed and did just that.

When we got back, we glued the silk flowers and frogs on top with hot glue guns.

I have no idea where that camp was, but I can still see the creek and the little bridge over it as clear as ever in my mind.

I see the blanket and the frog every day when I wake up, but other than that I had forgotten some of the things that made being a Girl Scout so much fun -- until Sunday, that is.

That's when I attended the all-faiths service at the Osage Community Centre which celebrated the organization's anniversary.

Sitting there listening to the Girl Scout alumnae recall all of the great memories they made at Camp Cherokee made me think about all of the good times I had with my troop in St. Charles.

One of the funniest things was when my troop in middle school went on a field trip.

My mom and another mother were our troop leaders. One weekend they decided to take us to Six Flags St. Louis. Instead of just going up for the day (it was only about 45 minutes from our house), they decided it would be neat to stay overnight in the hotel up the hill from the park.

When we got there, the seven of us Scouts stayed in the minivan while the moms checked in and got the room keys.

There was one girl in our troop who we always suspected was kind of strange. That afternoon, we finally realized how right we were.

She decided she would teach us how to hot-wire a minivan. I'm not sure why she thought we needed to know that. After all, there is no badge for hot-wiring a vehicle.

She never did show us though because our leaders came back outside before she had a chance.

Even so, I learned a lot from being a Girl Scout. If nothing else, I made a lot of good friends and memories.

Heather Kronmueller is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.