The Few The Proud The Teenage Girl Scouts

Some people make fun of me for being a teenage girl scout. They think its weird, although when I ask why they never really have a concrete reason. Personally I think that the scouts is wonderful. Especially Girl Scouts. They teach girls and eventually women about their opportunities and you learn how to be a strong independent women because of it. I was a brownie, and bridged to Junior, but the troop at my old brick and mortar school closed down after Katrina hit and the troop leader moved. Later on I would learn that a lot of troops closed down for that reason in New Orleans.

Well about five years went by and my baby sister started in the Brownie troop that had recently started at my old school. It was still my current school at the time. Around the same time I listened to a podcast from the lovely women at Stuff Mom Never Told You over at How Stuff Works about the Girl Scouts and their progressiveness during the suffrage movement and beyond. The combination of those two things spurred me into looking into rejoining the Girl Scouts. And through my research I learned that there was something called a Girl Scout Juliet. What the heck is that, you might ask. Well, a Juliet (named after Girl Scout founder and all around awesome person Juliet Gordon Low) is a Girl Scout that works without a troop. Meaning she does things on her own. Awesome I thought, since we hadn't had a troop for girls my age at my school EVER.

So my mom and I dragged our butts out to the Girl Scouts of Louisiana East Headquarters to get my stuff and sign me up as a Juliet. But when we were there someone contacted us that a few other girls were getting together and started our own troop. I feel like I have talked about my troop before, so lets skip ahead to this winter, when my service unit was holding a sing along. For anyone who isn't "in the know" a service unit is a bunch of troops in one area of the region.

The leader of my baby sisters brownie troop asked if I would help them learn a song for the sing along, so one Friday I went with my mom to the meeting and for an hour was in charge of teaching about 30 girls to sing Sleigh Ride and You are my Sunshine. Not the easiest task, makes you think twice about having... 30 kids.

Anyway, I go to the sing along to volunteer, because the email that was sent out said that Senior and Ambassadors were needed to run things. Come to find out I am THE teenage volunteer. There were are few moms and troop leaders but no one else under the age of 20. So I passed out cookies and kept people in line until it was time for the Sing Along portion. Where my baby sisters troop leader had me go and sing with them to "keep everyone on key."

After the sing along portion ARNO gave a presentation, and I walked around the area to make sure everyone staying where they were suppose to be and no one was doing anything that could harm them. Slowly people trickled out, and it was mostly Girl Scout staff and troop leaders left. I was standing with my mom as she talked to someone about cookies or something when a woman wearing a Girl Scout of Louisiana East polo came up to me and asked who I was. After hearing that I was "the" teenage volunteer, she asked me to give an interview.

I had seen people with a video camera wandering around all day, filming the singing and talking to other scouts. Eventually I found out that they were from something called "Speak of America" or something along those lines, I can never remember. They asked me about why I liked being a teenage girl scout and with the 100 year anniversary of the start of the scouts coming up how I think it helped the feminist movement. After words the woman in the polo came up and said that she really liked my answers and said that I was very eloquent for someone my age. She then asked if I would be ok with coming with her for some press things. I said yes, and my mom was ok with it so we'll see where that leads.