Pretty in Plaid: A Life, a Witch, and a Wardrobe, or the Wonder Years Before the Condescending, Egomaniacal Self-Centered Smart-Ass Phase Read Online Free PDF Page A

will have to go to a supply shop over the summer to purchase the pieces. But I do get a snappy gold Girl Scout insignia pin to go on my sash once my mom buys it and a boss set of embroidered wings.
    So that’s a start.

    “That? Was a pain in the butt,” I declare, hands patting the back pockets of my denim Toughskins for emphasis.
    My friend Donna’s holding her Girl Scout manual and nodding in agreement, her fat black braids bouncing off her back. We’re in her sunny L-shaped kitchen, sitting in the rattan chairs by the bay window. We’re both exhausted from having just completed the requirement for our cooking badge. Today’s experiment involved boiling water, eggs, strained patience on her mother’s part, a little bit of screaming, and one first-degree burn. As soon as we finished, Donna’s mom took her dad’s pack of cigarettes and went outside to smoke, which is kind of odd because she’s not a smoker. We can see her from where we’re sitting—she’s cross-legged on their patio and she keeps puffing and rocking back and forth.
    Well, what did she expect when she tried to teach a couple of fourth graders to make egg salad?
    Donna and I had to complete an entire litany of tedious steps to earn the embroidered patch. I’d say the effort (and blister) wasn’t worth it, but have you seen a sash laden with badges and pins? It’s glorious! It’s like Christmas and Halloween and a birthday, where I don’t get a guilt-inducing big-headed doll, all rolled together and then dipped in powdered sugar!
    Every time we complete a badge, we bring our page of signatures to our troop leader, Mrs. McCoy. She examines them and orders the respective badge, which we get after a couple of weeks. When they arrive, we have a quick awards ceremony and take our fabulous prizes home, where our mothers sew them on our sashes, or, in my mother’s case, pin them on my sash because she’s too busy sewing a bunch of other junk that I don’t want to wear.
    In my opinion, we’re not doing nearly enough in our meetings to fill up our sashes. A lot of times Mrs. McCoy veers from the badge-earning part of the manual and wants to teach us lessons about “friendship” and “faith.”
    Friendship and faith are not going to fill my sash, woman! I don’t want to learn ; I want to earn . Let’s get with the program already, McCoy! In a perfect world, our scout meetings would morph into little ad hoc badge sweatshops, thirty beret-covered heads bent in concentration and achievement. 16
    My mom volunteered to be one of the assistant troop leaders and she’s taking it way too seriously. She’s always referring to bits of the Girl Scout code when I don’t do exactly what she wants, like if I complain when Todd slinks off and I’m stuck with a sink full of dinner dishes to do by myself, she’ll say, “A Girl Scout is friendly and helpful,” or if I whisper something in Stacey’s ear, she’ll be all, “Girl Scouts don’t tell secrets.” Pfft, they do if they have good dirt on someone! And really? I’m in it for the badges, not some arcane code of ethics.
    When I get home from Donna’s, I tell my mom about our experiment and she signs off on my badge without question.
    Hmm.
    This is the first time I’ve participated in a badge-earning activity without her, and yet she didn’t demand an egg salad sandwich as proof. She just blithely believed me.
    Hmm, again.
    I quickly thumb through my guidebook and catch a glimpse of the badge for art. It looks like a painter’s palette covered in little daubs of brightly colored dots. I really, really dig the aesthetics of this badge. And I want it. A lot.
    You know . . . Donna and I did color at her house and that is kind of artistic—not today, but one time. At some point. I’m pretty sure. And that kind of satisfies one of the badge requirements, right?
    “Hey, Mom?” I ask. “We also did this one today.” I point at one of the entries on the page. “Can you sign