From the time I was five or six, my mother was heavily involved with an organization called the Trefoil Guild, a group of aging women who had once been Girl Guides, and who, like Peter Pan, refused to grow up. She attended meetings, went on outings, and went door-to-door selling cookies. What this meant for me was that the Fall I would turn seven, I was marched to First Baptist Church down the street from our house and enrolled in Brownies, a sort-of junior sect of the Girl Guides.
I have to say, it was pretty cool to be a Brownie: I got to be part of a little gang called a Six, wear a cute brown dress that totally matched my hair, and learn all sorts of useful life skills, like interpretive dance, and how to light a campfire with nothing more than a rock and a piece of driftwood. Even better than molding me into a female version of MacGyver, Brownies was a place to make friends. Almost all the cool girls from my grade two class were part of my chapter, and so I had high hopes of using my two-year Brownie membership as a ticket to increased popularity at school.
The first year was a great success, as I was placed in the Six known as “Pixies” with three of the most popular girls from school: Andrea, Jodi, and Becky. Becky was the leader of our Six, and it was a real coup to be with her, because she was in third grade, and had just come back from spending a year doing missionary work in Nepal with her family; her acquaintance was equivalent to the Brownie badge for cool. My luck transferred to school too, where I was, if not accepted, than at least acknowledged by the cool clique. Things were going exactly according to plan, and by the end of Brownies, I was sure to be number one on the speed dial of all the girls in class!
While the first year of Brownies had been very good to me, the same could not be said for others. Ruth, a quiet girl who had been placed in a Six with a bunch of girls we didn’t know, had lost her first tooth during a Brownie sleepover in the church hall, and been so scared that she burst into tears and had to be taken home by Brown Owl, our troop leader. By the following Monday, she was the laughing stock of Miss Wills’ class, and even though she and I were friends, I laughed along with everyone else. I couldn’t risk being ostracized for being different - not with entry into the cool clique at my fingertips! In the end, Ruth couldn’t take the humiliation, and by the next Fall had enrolled in a new Brownie troop, and a new school.
Second year in Brownies was when things became really important. Becky had flown up to Girl Guides, and so a new leader would be chosen for our Six. Everyone was vying for the promotion, for with it would come an automatic increase in status. I had always suspected that Brown Owl had it in for me, and when she picked Jodi to be in charge of the Pixies, my suspicions were confirmed. I was relegated to be second in command, which was equivalent to being the friend of a friend of a friend of someone famous; in other words, no ticket to glory. I would have to show my stuff in some other way. A typical overachiever, I set about to win the most badges I could. I would stop at nothing and let no one get in my way.
By the middle of the year, things were going great; I was leading the troop with 26 badges and seeing marked improvement in my social life. There were lots of invitations coming my way, for play dates and birthday parties, and even some sleepovers. I finally felt like one of the cool kids! At Brownies, it was almost time for our Fly Up ceremony, where my friends and I would officially graduate to the Girl Guides. As a special treat for us, Brown Owl (who I still mistrusted) arranged for a Sign Language Interpreter to give a special lesson. The girl who excelled the most would be given the Communicator badge, which none of us had yet received. It felt like the final stretch of a long marathon – and I was about to cross the finish line first!
There was about a dozen of us in the sign language lesson, each girl trying to outdo her neighbor and show Brown Owl that she was the one on which to bestow the coveted badge. Jodi and I were hanging on every mimed letter of the Interpreter, and even though I was feeling a tingle in my bladder, I was determined not to be distracted by the petty needs of my body. The lesson was almost over when the instructor asked for two volunteers to come to the front of the room and recite the sign language alphabet as quickly as possible. It was to be a race and whoever won would take home the badge. My hand raced into the air, and Jodi and I were selected to compete.
We took our places next to the instructor, and the countdown began. “Three…Two…One...GO!” called Brown Owl. Something inside of me took this command as permission, and as my left hand began reciting the alphabet, my bladder released, and a stream of pee began trickling down my right leg and into my brown sock. Still more focused on winning the badge than on the shame and social damage peeing myself would bring, I closed my eyes and continued to sign. Reaching “Z”, I threw my fist into the air in victory, and opened my eyes to find the class staring open-mouthed at my stained dress. I made eye contact with Jodi, and she pointed at me and began to laugh. Brown Owl came over, handed me the Communicator badge, and pointed towards the bathroom.
I may have won the badge that day, and ended up with more than any other Brownie at the Fly Up ceremony that June, but the damage to my social life was beyond repair. Since I’d shown “un-Brownie-like behavior,” my mother grounded me until summer break started, which didn’t really make a difference, as no one was calling me anymore. Worse was that my classmates had obviously heard about the pee incident, and so for the rest of the school year, I was called Hershey Squirt. It may have made no sense, but it still stung when coming from those who I had so strived to emulate. Now I knew how Ruth had felt the year before, and regretted how I’d been a part of it.
Eventually the storm passed, and by the following September, the cool kids had moved on to making fun of another girl, Julia, who had been caught picking her nose seconds before our class picture was taken. My grade four snapshot features her hand at her nose and tears streaming down her face. And to this day, even though it’s wrong, every time I see it I laugh.
