Not too many years ago, the Girl Scouts of America celebrated its 100th anniversary. The thought of that auspicious occasion made me remember those halcyon days of so long ago when all we young girls proudly wore our green Girl Scout dresses, berets, belts, green socks, well-polished Oxfords, and badges we’d won, proudly sewed onto a sash across our chests.

We were so honored to belong to that group of potentially great future women who knew how to start a fire in the forest with a string and a stick, and other important things I forget. The really clever ones of us sneaked a Zippo lighter into the forest but those girls probably didn’t grow up to be Great Future Women. (Or wait — did they? Hmmm.)

Oh, we were just such utter dorks. Even our leaders wore uniforms, and they looked extra dorky. So much green! We all carried around a thick important looking (green) book explaining all the rules of being a member of that esteemed group — how crucial it was that we lived pure lives, (and we all know what THAT means, right?) that we stayed clean in thought and body and that just in case we felt ourselves slipping into a life of degradation (chewing gum in school, running in the halls, not going to church, having impure thoughts about adolescent boys during arithmetic). We could always refer to the Code of Honor (aka The Girl Scout Law) and that would quickly straighten us out and save us, which of course we had to memorize. It went like this:

The Girl Scout Promise

On my honor, I will try:
To do my duty to God and country,
To help other people at all times,
And to obey the Girl Scout Law.

The Girl Scout Law

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

Pretty noble stuff. Did I write all that from memory? You bet I did. OK, maybe I didn’t. Actually, I did remember the Promise but have managed to forget the Law. However, that doesn’t mean for one second I don’t live by it every single day of my life, no sirree. Yes, I still do! Ask anyone.

However, my memories about those glory days aren’t exactly all about sleeping with mosquitoes in the woods, rolled into a bag spread on rocks with no mattress, definitely no toilets, or memorizing which woodland berries were safe to eat so we wouldn’t drop dead on the forest floor, or how to blow Taps on a 50-cent harmonica.

No, sadly, whenever I read about the Girl Scouts I’m drawn horribly back to my first, and last, experience with Welsh rarebit. One rainy Saturday our GS leader decided to invite us over to her home to sing some stirring GS songs and to dine at her table where she hoped she could teach us some decent GS table manners. Her name was Miss Megok so you can well imagine with that moniker, she wasn’t all grins and giggles.

Anyway, we all trooped (sorry) over to Miss Megok’s home that evening. We sat in a circle on the floor (oh how dearly I remember being able to do that and being able to get up again) and recited the Law and the Promise while saluting with the pointer and middle fingers of our right hands.

She had prepared dinner for us and we all seated ourselves on her heavy oak chairs and soon, she proudly bore the main course into the room; Welsh rarebit.

What?? “Oh NO!!!” squealed the Girls in Green in unison. “We can’t eat a BUNNY!” A few began to cry. Not I. I was a rugged Girl Scout. I would eat a live alligator if it meant honoring The Law.

“Oh dear ones,” said a soothing Ms. Megok. “It is not RABB-it,” it is RARE-bit” and she patiently explained the difference. We all tried it because The Law demanded we be respectful and polite. It was pretty ghastly but we were Girl Scouts after all, and due to our rigorous Scout boot camp training, we could handle any difficulty.

We finished that dreadful orange glop and Miss. Megok happily served us cherry pie with cherry ice cream after which we all stumbled into her living room for a nice group sing-along around her ancient, untuned upright piano. Miss M. got us all started with a rousing roundelay of Row Row Row Your Boat with her wildly flailing left arm conducting two groups of Scouts while her right one hammered out the melody. We butchered the song but Ms. M. kept it all going, grinning maniacally.

I was not present. Without being noticed, I’d hung back in the Oaken Chaired dining room because I began to feel weird. Queasy. Terrible. Something heavy and viciously disagreeable was lurching its way up my esophagus. Rarebit, cherry pie and ice cream, that hideous piano music — I was going to be violently sick and I knew it. Luckily for me, the songs in the living room increased in volume so I crawled over and under the huge oak dining room table, and on my hands and knees I hurled up that Welsh rarebit with more bucking and vigor than I’d ever hurled, before or since. Up it all came, the whole orange, slimy, chunky mess, and splashed down into her vividly patterned and likely priceless Asian Rug, happily with mostly all the same colors as my regurgitated Welsh rarebit. What were the odds? I stared down at the mess as it slowly sank and blended into all those flowers and squiggles and patterns. I reached up and grabbed a napkin left on the table and wiped my sweating face and gross mouth, dropped it and a few others on top of the unpleasantness, and then very, very slowly crawled out from under the piano and eased my way slowly into the living room, singing lustily.

I was so relieved when just about then our parents arrived to take us home. I snapped off a smart GS salute to Miss Megok, shouted over my shoulder that I’d always and forever honor the Girl Scout promise, and bolted out the door to my father’s car.

I will never know if Miss Megok ever found out who left the terrible mess under her dining room table (DNA testing hadn’t been invented yet) and I never had the courage of a Girl Scout to own up to my supreme lack of cool. I knew what I’d done made me a disgrace to the Girls in Green but I kept silent. Thus, because of my cowardice I thought I should do the honorable thing and resign from that august group, which I eventually did, and in the many decades since, you can bet the rent I have never eaten or even looked at Welsh rarebit, or even easily at a rabbit, ever again. And cherry ice cream? Fuggedabowdit.

LC Van Savage is a Brunswick writer.

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