On Being Prepared* Part I

It’s taken me a while to pick out the thing I miss most about Girl Guides, and that is the opportunity to try new things every week.

There were lots of other great things about Guides — not the least of which being the people I met, the friends I made — but more and more often I find myself trying to reconstruct that “for the fun and challenge of it!” excitement of learning how to snowshoe one week and using power tools the next.

In some ways, Guides had the perfect structure for me. I bet I’d have my PhD dissertation done a lot faster if I got badges for completing short checklists of activities. I’d probably feel better about my work, too. And, honestly? I’m not sure why. Sure, it’s boastfully nice to have everyone see that you’ve no space left on your scarf for another cloth disc because you’ve been so busy, but I also just like having the tangible, visible proof of a small task well done. Like ticking off a to-do list item, but prettier.

Anyway, I miss the way Guides got me scheming to try new activities — and especially the way our leaders arranged for us to try new badge-earning activities together — in bite-sized chunks, week after week. These days, if I want to try something new, I have to find it, organize it, and do it myself. The weekend before I sat down to type this, I arranged to try target shooting at my local firearms range. That afternoon was my first acrobatics lesson. And I still haven’t given up on teaching myself basic sleight-of-hand skills, one by one, or learning how to make new mixed drinks, or baking the perfect meat and ale pie.

I joined Girl Guides of Canada as a Brownie when I was seven. I stayed through Guides and Pathfinders, and only wound up leaving in Senior Branches, mid-way through high school, after a couple years of being a Ranger. When I first joined, it was because my mother had been a Brownie when she was a girl, and she wanted my sister and me to have the same experience.

Looking back, I suspect she wanted us to have another kind of experience she also felt was valuable: while Dad, my sister, and I all attended Jewish day school through childhood, Mom grew up in the public system. And although I find that outsiders to the Jewish community often have the incorrect idea that Jews are uniform in race, socioeconomic background, and physical appearance, it’s nevertheless true that being in an environment populated entirely by peers of my own religion sheltered me in ways being in the public system would not have done.

Outside the very multicultural Toronto Montessori kindergarten I went to as a preschooler (which I barely remember), Guides was where I made my first good friends who weren’t Jewish. Sure, I encountered kids from other backgrounds at swimming lessons, at summer day camps, and in houseleague soccer. But those friendships were different from the ones I made in Guides. There were just more opportunities to get to know the other girls, more encouragement from the leaders to bond, and more time spent working on things together.

Because that’s another thing I experienced through Guides: working on projects I never would’ve dreamed of trying on my own. It’s embarrassing to admit, but whatever social confidence I have now wouldn’t have got any exercise between the ages of 6 and 16 if I hadn’t had to sell cookies door to door. (In fact, that’s what brought on this entry — running into a company selling Girl Guide Cookies for $4 a box in the Eaton Centre. Man, when I started out, they were made by Mr. Christie and only $2 a box. Time flies.) Similarly, Guides was where I had my first experiences volunteering — with the rest of my company at telethons, or picking up litter in the park.

I’d be the first to admit that I wasn’t exactly a willing volunteer (if you’ll excuse the oxymoron). I lived for the moment when my last box of cookies was gone and I could go back to reading, or when the last minute of our shift ticked by and the phones stopped ringing and I could go home. But I still learned that even when your heart isn’t in it, sometimes doing good means going through the motions until you can do better. And I wasn’t allowed to run away from things that frightened me (bothering strangers in their homes! taking a call from someone I didn’t know at all!) because there were things more important than my personal comfort level.

Similarly, going camping (something that appealed to me since I was in first grade but for which I had absolutely no extra-Guiding opportunities or experience) with Guides and Brownies helped me to learn other things.

Yeah, a lot of the camp “habits” Guides taught us were outdated or out of place (I’m looking at you, tripods!), and others were developed more for the benefit of an organization wishing to minimize legal liability than for campers wanting to learn handy skills. But along the way, I learned way more important things: that waking up with a spider crawling across your face is not the end of the world. That not having flush toilets or showers is likewise not the end of the world. That getting dirty is okay, as long as you stay hygienic.

The funny thing is, if you’d asked me back then what I liked about Guides, I probably wouldn’t have mentioned any of this, except maybe the part about the badges. I was (am) a dork — I loved wearing my little uniform with the special belt and special scarf and special sash. I loved marching into horseshoe formation and stomping into “at ease” at the right moment. I loved knowing what each cord, pin, and badge meant and what they said about things I’d accomplished.

But maybe that’s the mark of a valuable experience, that it keeps giving long after you think it’s done. I don’t mean to say Guides was perfect for me (stay tuned after Passover for part two), but if I had it all to do over again, I wouldn’t think twice.

Heck, I doubt I’d have to think once.

* While it’s true that I never thought hyenas essential (they’re crude and unspeakably plain), this blog entry isn’t about that. Perhaps some other time, I’ll discuss how maybe they’ve a glimmer of potential, if allied to my vision and brain.