I might have wanted to be a Girl Scout if they'd offered the sorts of things the British Girl Guides are now thinking of adding to the basic fireside cookery and essential first aid classes: financial management, sex ed, and IKEA-fu (fine, fine: "assembling flat-pack furniture"). Basic camping and navigation skills, both of which were notably absent in my childhood adventures with our church scout troop,* are all very well and good, but more of us have struggled with an umlaut-laden set of dresser drawers than have ever tried to thread a shock rod through a tent sleeve. The story's getting a bit of the "ooh, naughty girl scouts, fnur fnur" spin, on account of apparently nobody can write about adolescent girls plus sex without going a bit...funny, but the basic story is impressive, because the skills the girls are asking for are so basic and so useful. It's fun to imagine what the "how to stand up to bullying" badge might look like.
*Really, it's good that we had St. George the Pathfinder as our patron saint, because we got lost as lost can be on some of those hikes, borderline Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon lost; our equipment was ancient and decrepit; and the lessons we got in first aid and other theoretically useful classes were at least 50 years out of date. Later in my life, I was stunned to find that camping could be and usually was fun, comfortable, and safe. I also now know that a flask of very good scotch is a key bit of camping equipment, because nothing cuts the wet miseries quite like a wee nip of peat-flavored firewater.
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6 comments:
What? Girls can camp?
Pssh, who else do you think does the cooking and brings the good drinks?
I b'lieve I mentioned being quite intoximacated this weekend... I do remember talking about scounts... "We used to do paramilitary exercises! Our plan was to take back the motherland!" I'm sure people thought it was the drink, but it's true, it's ALL TRUE!
Yes, the flaw in that cunning martial plan was that we would never have found the motherland before we starved to death. We'd have been wandering around Tibet, going, "Well, fuck, does this look like taiga to you?" and trying to milk the wrong end of a yak.
My other once went on a hiking trip with a bunch of granolas who took as their main accessory the beer keg from the party the night before. The keg was duly finished before hiking commenced. Even with his asthma he was able hike better than everyone else who struggled with cramps and the dull drum warnings of alcohol withdrawal. That's when they came about the hidden militia installation of skinheads. Doh!
Our crew were more circumspect about the booze, especially since most of us were under 15, but I do remember one boy dumping his water and refilling his canteen with Pepsi.
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