March 7, 2009

Red vs. Blue.....not quite






Vs.


Ok....I'll admit that I'm slightly biased, since I was active in the Boy Scouts well into adulthood, but with the coming spring comes the inevitable Girl Scout Cookie sales and I just have to go WTF?!

I was watching TV this morning and the local NBC affiliate was doing a promo for a local (Boy Scout) Troop's annual pancake breakfast fundraiser being held next week. The spot had 3 Scouts and one Scoutmaster and the Scouts did almost all of the talking and they actually cooked a pancake and had real representative food. I did have an issue with the Scoutmaster wearing the neckerchief wrong ( Seriously dude...it isn't an ascot!), but the group was otherwise in proper uniform.

Now fast forward a couple of hours when I had to make a short jaunt to the store for dinner fixins. I saw no less than three groups of girl scouts hawking the ubiquitous cookies. I pretty much just fixated on the first group...which was representative of just about every group of cookie-toting-tykes I run into this time of year. There were 5 adults and only two girls. I have to assume that the girls were Girl Scouts, but since nobody was in uniform who the hell knows. Maybe you could call the cookie costume that one was wearing qualified as some sort of costume.

My mind started going, as it often does.......what do Girl Scouts do aside from sell cookies? I've never seen a group of them in uniform doing any type of community service, seen one Girl Scout Camp (At Boy Scout Camp we were required to wear a "scouting" T-shirt so we thought it funny to try and buy Girl Scout T-Shirts one year), and I've basically never really heard of Girl Scouts outside of the cookie sales.

Now my personal history taints things, but I think Boy Scouts are known for camping, merit badges, and helping little old ladies across the street....and Eagle Scouts.

Can anybody that isn't in the Girl Scouts (or had been) even name one of their ranks?

2 comments:

Irena Reznik said...

The ranks are Brownie, Cadet, Senior, and Ambassador.

I was a Girl Scout. Back then, cookies were sold (by us and not our parents) to fund camping trips where we learned how to start fires with dry sticks. It was basically the same thing as being a Boy Scout, except that you had to wear a stupid skirt.

I'm pretty sure that Girl Scouts only sell cookies now, though.

wjt said...

Chris:

It's been a long time since Wapello! Did you hear Ely closed it? I remember the girl scout t-shirts at camp! (I also remember you never taking your hat off, even when sleeping, for fear you'd forget it and the program director would get after you.)

Anyway, don't forget the Gold award, which is supposed to be somewhat equivalent to the Eagle Scout, or so I've been told.

Keep in touch!

- Will