As a kid, some of the most hallowed space on my bookshelf was occupied by my collection of old Girl Scout handbooks.  I had editions from most decades, collected one by one from thrift stores and antiques booths at the fair, and late in the evening, when the world got too loud for me, I would pull one of them from their bed and settle on mine.  With my back against the wall, my legs crossed kindergarten-style, and my comforter pulled into my lap, I would spend hours within their pages, rereading familiar text and poring over illustrations like they might contain secrets.  I loved those books.  I loved the old fashioned uniforms, with their cute hats and oddly shaped neckties.  I loved the copyright pages, and doing the math in my head to figure out how old my mom would have been when the book was printed.  I loved the Brownie story, and the pages and pictures that made Juliette Gordon Low one of my earliest heroes.  I loved those books, and when I put my own Brownie and Junior handbooks beside them, I felt like I was part of an ongoing history.

In Brownies, I was part of an active troop.  Tuesdays, if I remember correctly, were Brownie Day.  This was vitally important because the best part of the whole week was getting to wear my Brownie uniform to school.  I had almost the whole kit – the white shirt, patterned in pale brown trefoils and stripes, underneath the brown jumper.  The sash, and the little brown felt flag that carried my pin.  And best of all, my beanie with the little orange Brownie dancing on the front, which I felt certain made me look like the coolest 2nd grader on the planet.  All I was missing was the brown knee-socks with the little orange flag-thingies, for which I pined mightily.  Every Tuesday morning I dressed carefully in my uniform, and woe be unto my Mom if for some reason I didn’t get to wear it.  Wearing my uniform and going to the weekly troop meeting was important to me in the way that some things just are when you’re a kid – things you never were able to find words for, no matter how badly you wanted to make your exasperated parents understand.  Luckily for me, my mom got it.  She’d been a Girl Scout, too.

When I changed schools at the beginning of the third grade, one of the hardest things about the transition was that my new school didn’t have much in the way of Scout activity.  At first, as I recall, there was no troop at all.  Then when I was in fourth or fifth grade, one of my friend’s moms started a troop.  I was glad to have meetings again but it wasn’t quite the same.  Nobody in my new troop wore their uniforms to school.  The new troop leader worked on badges in a different way than my old one had, and I didn’t understand the structure.  I was older, and the other girls my age weren’t as interested in Scouting as they might have been a few years before.

I technically remained a member of Girl Scouts for a few more years, as I remember, but without the friendship of a troop I was never really active again.  It didn’t mean its value to me had changed at all, though.  Even into high school, and on visits home from college, my remedy for stress and confusion was often to pull one of my Girl Scout handbooks from the shelf and settle in to read for a while.  Their pages were filled with instructions and stories that told me that girls could be ready, could handle any problem, could get things done, darn it.  If books could be comfort food, then those Girl Scout handbooks were my homemade mac ‘n cheese.

Flash forward to my early-to-mid-twenties.  I was in a thrift store, shopping with my mom, and, as always seems to happen, I found myself in the book section.  Though it had been a long while since I’d actively sought out new acquisitions for my GS handbook collection (and, in fact, a long time since I’d even seen what I had, it having been boxed up and stored in the course of several moves), my eyes strayed naturally to the top shelf, where all the scouting books were.

“Oh, hey,” I murmured to myself, smiling as I reached for a familiar-looking green spine.  “That’s the same edition I used when I was-”  And that’s about where my eyes widened and my mouth dropped open.  For there, written in my mother’s tidy and unmistakable script in the top right corner of the cover, was my name.

“MOM!”

After a humorous and still-unresolved discussion about how the heck my Junior handbook had been given to the thrift store, the slightly worn out book went home with me.  That night, paging through it, I felt a certain kind of comfort and safety that I hadn’t felt in a long time.  It was like finding an old friend, a best friend.

The last ten years of my life have been full of the unexpected.  A childhood seizure disorder I’d never thought of as being much of a problem became a full fledged disability as I hit college, affecting virtually every facet of my life.  I dropped out of school, for a few years I had major difficulty reading anything, and I found myself stuttering and losing words and memories.

Slowly, slowly, I’ve been able to surmount most of what life put in front of me, but the experience has changed me profoundly.  I no longer feel confident and capable.  In new situations I hang back, waiting for someone else to jump in and save the day, because I’m pretty sure they know more about how to do it than I do.  I’ll do what’s asked of me, and gladly, but I can’t ever seem to see anymore what needs to be done.  I never take initiative – I don’t seem to remember how.

Which brings us to the Super Secret Project of Awesome I’ve been hinting at over the last two weeks.  I don’t know what made it pop to mind, but one night a couple of weeks ago I had a sudden, crazy bout of inspiration.  I miss Scouting.  I miss the sisterhood, I miss having a reason and a path to learn new things, and I miss earning markers of my achievements.  I’ve often half-joked, half-lamented to my sisters and my friends that one ought to be able to earn badges as a grown-up, too; that there ought to be Girl Scouts for Grown-Ups.  And as I was yet again thinking over all of this, a little speech bubble popped into my head.

“Why not?”

Well… hey, why not?  Why not pick up where I left off, in Junior Girl Scouts, and work my way through the handbook and the badge book?  As I dusted off my old Junior handbook once more and looked again through its pages, the idea grew on me.  It could be a lot of fun, and I could use a project.  Besides, I’ve spent much of the last ten years feeling lost and inept.  Girl Scouting aims to “build girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place!”  Well, why not me, too?

Today is the birthday of Girl Scouting in the United States, the 98th anniversary of when Juliette Gordon Low, after years of searching for something useful to do with her life, gathered 18 girls to be the first American Girl Guides.  In scouting, Juliette found a sense of purpose – to help girls learn to be capable and self-reliant, to be ready to take on the world as well as to make it better.

I’ve been searching a while, too, and it feels appropriate to begin my endeavor on the same day she began hers.  Beginning next week, Wednesdays on this blog will be devoted to my Scouting updates, following my progress as I work my way through each of the badges.    Juliette’s legacy has so far reached over 50 million American girls.  I hope she won’t mind one lost 29-year-old coming along, too.

Tune in on Wednesday to find out what badge I’m aiming at first!