11:30am

As I write these posts, I keep a record of all of them in a notepad file. Not that they're going to go away anytime soon, but for some reason, I just want to have them kept separately.

Weirdly, the notepad window is randomly closing on me--I think it's one of those things where it's saying, 'bitch, don't keep me open, I'm tired of this crap already, knock it off!'

Or...maybe my mind runs away with me again, which it frequently does.

This post's song:

Silver, Blue, and Gold (live) -- Bad Company

Though this song is not exactly about what the memory evokes, I always think about the years I spent as a Girl Scout when this song comes up. Part of that is the song they sing about friendship: 'Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold.'

I was a Girl Scout for several years, from Brownies up through Juniors. Being an awkward kid, no one really liked to have me in their troop, until it came time for cookie season, because the families in my neighborhood always bought a lot, along with the folks that my parents worked with. One year, I volunteered to be the cookie coordinator, which meant that my parents and I were the ones to pick my troop's cookies up from the regional distributor, then make sure that each of the girls in the troop got the cookies they were supposed to.

The memory of that one always makes me laugh--I was in jr. high by this point, and I've always had a love-hate relationship with libraries and library books. I LOVE to read, but I had so much trouble bringing books back on time that it has gotten me into trouble a few times. This particular time, the library was holding my report card hostage until they got their overdue book fees. So, when the girls came to get their cookies, they were discussing grades, which baffled my mom, because I'd told her that we didn't have our report cards yet.

I was really surprised, in the end, because I thought she'd get mad that I had all these overdue book fees, but she just laughed and gave me the money to pay them. I don't think we ever told my step-dad--or, if she did, she never told me--he definitely would've been mad. Just another one of those things that reinforces how cool my mom is, I suppose.

But I still remember being a Girl Scout, and I keep wondering whether things would change for me now, if I were to volunteer. Would I be a good troop 'mom' or a good assistant? Or would I be the one that no one wanted to have around again? Something tells me I've changed enough in the intervening years that it'd be different.