I was a Campfire girl (through the YMCA, I think) when I was very little, but we moved around a lot when I was a kid, so I didn’t stick with it. When my daughter started school, I couldn’t WAIT to get her into a Girl Scout troop, and naturally they were also looking for leaders, so in I jumped. We stayed with it until my daughter was a fourth grader (Junior) - we would have stayed longer, but my co-leader passed away quite suddenly and unexpectedly, and none of the girls in the troop had the heart to go on. I love the whole organization, rally, but I am very glad I do not ever have to go to another “lock-in” – locked for twelve hours overnight in an indoor waterpark with three hundred 7-14 year old girls who have no intention of sleeping is NOT my idea of a good time.
Do other people remember the pledge as:
“I promise to do my best to love God and my country, and to help other people every day especially those at home.”??
No one at work believes me that this is what we said. I KNOW it is. I’m one of those weird people who has memorized Jabberwocky for god sake. I remember everything, and this is definitely the pledge we said at the beginning of every meeting. Has it been updated?
Morgainelf, I know that they changed the Girl Scout Promise at least once to put in the “serve God” part (probably around the same time the Pledge of Allegiance had “under God” inserted). Here’s the Promise as I learned it:
On my honor, I will try
To serve God and my country
To help people at all times
And to live by the Girl Scout Law.
Maybe there’s something about helping your nation or home in the GS Law, and you’re getting the Law and the Promise mixed up?? (The Law is that hideously long thing where every sentence begins “I will do my best…”)
tsarina, cleaning lats was a standard chore at the camp I attended–I don’t think it’s that unusual. Those must’ve been foul ones, since I’ve never seen someone throw up while cleaning one.
By the way, I discovered a tremendously awful thing at the singalong—they’ve changed the beautiful blue of the Cadette/Senior uniform to TAN! Yuck!
They must have changed this a few times, because we learned:
On my honor, I will try
To serve God, my country, and mankind
And to live by the Girl Scout Law.
I was a Brownie for a year, and gave it up when I figured that they were never going to do anything interesting. We did yarn crafts. Not useful things, like learning now to knit or sew or anything. Just dumb ol’ crafts, like, God’s Eye weaving and gluing yarn to fabric to make pictures, and other dumb stuff. I held out for the trip to Girl Scout Camp, because I figured that cool stuff had to happen there. Sleeping in tents! Horseback riding! Nature walks! Campfires! But no, we spent the entire time singing stupid songs and doing more yarn crafts, and then we slept inside a big building in sleeping bags on a tile floor, and made smores in the microwave. I kid you not. I had more fun playing on my own in our back yard, so I quit.
“…especially those at home.” was part of the pledge that I learned. I’m 36 now.
They changed it to the “help people at all times” version sometime in the late 1980’s.
-
How many years were you in Scouts?
Eight years, second grade through ninth. -
What level did you go up to?
Senior. -
What did you like the most about it?
Camping. Other trips (they had an overnight program in the science museum in Richmond once, so we got to camp out in the museum; we also went to Chincoteague and to the Amish country in Pennsylvania). Making homemade ice cream. Being a volunteer aide at summer camp and chasing after the young 'uns.
Dislike?
Some of the counselors, especially the woman running my senior troop the last year – the nervous soccer-mom mindset has always gotten on my nerves, and some of them acted as if they were on a power trip as well. Prissy girls. Uniforms (mercifully, we only wore them for ceremonies).
On my honor, I will try
To serve God, my country, and mankind
And to live by the Girl Scout Law.
That’s the way I learned it, too. This would have been 1980, I believe. My mom was the Brownie leader (this was pre-Daisy level), then Junior leader. I made it all the way to Seniors, got my Silver award, then quit due to complete boredom. Well, that, and I was one of 2 Seniors in the entire area. I got almost every badge you could think of, just because I had nothing better to do. I still have them all, in a box in my bedroom.
I hated hated HATED! selling cookies. We always ended up going to Bi-Lo at the crack of dawn on a Saturday morning to sell whatever excess we had. And when I first started selling cookies, there were no restrictions on selling door-to-door. (I believe they encouraged it, at one point.) I believe they started discouraging it when Adam Walsh disappeared.
I liked going camping. My parents were always camping junkies, so every summer I went camping with the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts. (My dad was a BS leader.) My dad taught us all how to do knots, and how to distill the salt out of salt water so we would have something to drink. My mom was the one to get us to do all sorts of artsy-craftsy stuff. She’s incredibly talented when it comes to making something out of an egg-carton and some yarn. When I was in fourth grade, our troop took the train to Savannah to go to Juliette Gordon Lowe’s house. I think going places and camping were my favorite parts of being in Girl Scouts.
- How many years were you in Scouts?
5
- What level did you go up to?
Juniors
- What did you like the most about it? Dislike?
Like: Playing with fire (aka camping), the parts of camping that didn’t involve fire (but not quite as much), the Peace Arch exchange that we did with canadian troops of various sorts, and even (from time to times) crafts, the tradition/connection of it all, it was weird and cool, meeting women of all ages later in life from other parts of the country/world who had all learned the same songs, stories, etc. while dressed in a completely style-free green uniform.
Dislike: The other girls in my troop - in fact, dislike is far too weak of a word. Cookie selling, just not in my personality to do door to door sales.
I was a Brownie for two years…never a girl scout.
I don’t know why because I always wanted to be…
I think selling cookies scared me.
Are you guys mixing up the Girl Scout Promise and the Girl Scout Law, maybe?
From http://www.girlscouts.org/program/promiselaw.html,
The Girl Scout Promise
On my honor, I will try:
To serve God and my country,
To help people at all times,
And to live by the Girl Scout Law.
The Girl Scout Law
I will do my best to be
honest and fair,
friendly and helpful,
considerate and caring,
courageous and strong, and
responsible for what I say and do,
and to
respect myself and others,
respect authority,
use resources wisely,
make the world a better place, and
be a sister to every Girl Scout
- How many years were you in Scouts?
5. From 4th grade through 9th grade. Before that I was in Indian Princesses, afterwards Junior Achievement. - What level did you go up to?
Cadet - What did you like the most about it? Dislike?
I also liked camping best and at least one weekend which we spent at a horse camp. I still remember getting to ride a pony bareback. Oh, and tsarina and booklover, I hate to admit this, but I once volunteered my father and me to clean the latrines on a Father-Daughter campout. It was my first one, and I didn’t know what was involved. It was also the last time I volunteered for that.
What I disliked most was the gossip and the politics. My slightly handicapped best friend was also in the Scouts and I spent too much time watching us get ignored or put down.
I remember having a blast in Girl Scouts because of all the camping and getting to try new things. There was a certain amount of domestic stuff, but I managed to avoid most of it, but I learned to knit from our troop leader and still enjoy doing it.
CJ
- How many years were you in Scouts?
eight or nine years - What level did you go up to?
Senior? Cadet? dunno they both sound familiar. I stopped in sophomore year. - What did you like the most about it?
My mother ran the troop, so our troop learned a lot of things other girls didn’t know: embroidery, camping, candlemaking, a LOT of nature/farm/survival/firstaid lore and knowledge. (I even got to be in one of their calendars! oooh aaah!
)
Dislike?
My mother ran the troop, so she rode me hard. The news announcing the biggest selling troop in the state before we even get the forms. The way the GSA ran things and catered to overprotective mothers, many things we couldn’t do because of this. Ex: my mother was flabbergasted to hear that while at GSA camp, free time was to be spent at the camp site writing letters or having quiet time in our tent, no just getting together or having a volleyball game or whatever like BSA camp.
- For those who made it up to Seniors–did you ever get your Gold Award?
It’s been a while I don’t remember what this is. Probably not then, huh? I remember having to do some kind of large project with several parts and a report shortly before I realized I had outgrown it and left the troop. I miss it now a little bit. What do you have to do to become a den mother/troop leader? (I think I’m mixing up GSA and BSA terms there.)
-
How many years?
From 4th grade through 9th–Junior to Senior. -
What level?
Senior. Red vest time (Cadettes got blue for a while?? Man, we had ugly green plaid.) I still have my vest with all the patches. I quit when my best friend dropped me–and she was the troop leader’s daughter. -
Like?
Camp! Campcampcamp! I wanted to be a counselor, but always had to work at a better paying job. Also, we took lots of camping trips as a troop. I liked earning badges as a Junior, making goodies (we learned how to make beef jerky, yum), and the songs. I am the camp song queen even today. I was a pretty good cookie seller–it was the calendars I hated selling.
Dislike?
Some of the other girls weren’t the greatest, but all in all it was pretty good…(what do you expect at 12?). I can’t think of anything I really hated.
- Gold award?
No, just silver. Awhile back I was looking at my friend’s photo albums and came upon her Gold award. She was really gratified that I was so impressed!
I’m fully planning on being a troop leader when baby G gets older. Oh boy!
I’m 34 now, and was a girl scout in southern Louisiana.
I’m not sure whether it was the Promise or the Law, but I know we held up our three fingers and said it at the beginning of every meeting. I thought it was called the Girl Scout Pledge, but it could have been Promise.
genie Red? Green plaid?? When were you in Scouts? Both Cadettes and Seniors wore blue. The only difference was a reversible tie (green on one side, blue on the other).
Yeah, the Promise is the short, three fingers-up thing.
miamouse, you didn’t grow up in Silver Spring, MD, did you? One of my closest friends in Scouts was named Mia and her family occasionally called her Mouse—you’re not her, are you??
I was in Scouts from Brownie to Junior, when my troop took a camping trip where the “dorks,” (me and a few other chubby/picked on girls) were made to sleep in one bunk-type thing, and the cute, snotty girls all shacked up in another.
Myself and a friend got up early one morning, when the sun was rising and the light woke us, and went to watch it while sitting at a picnic table and snacking on something I don’t remember. One of the snotty girls who decided she didn’t like me, for whatever reason, apparently dumped her shampoo bottle out all over their bunk floor and then tried to accuse one of us of doing it. In retrospect, it seems kind of stupid that one of us would be able to get into their bunk, as noisy as the wooden floors were, and rummage through their stuff without waking someone up. Anyway, the troop leaders bought the story and dragged us each, one by one, into the nice tent they got to stay in and interrogated us.
Basically this brat’s mom accused me of doing it, then accused me of lying when I tried to defend myself, and saying the girls said they’d seen me do it. When I asked why on earth I’d care about so-and-so’s shampoo, she said she didn’t know, and when I suggested they were lying because they didn’t like me (one of the girls was her daughter), she positively exploded screaming at me.
It was not a happy trip. Needless to say, I quit going after that.
I wish I would run into that stupid bitch somewhere now.
I was in Girl Scouts for one year, as a brownie. I liked all the interesting things we did for merit badges - going to an aquarium, visiting a “living history” program to see how pioneer life was - I got to churn butter and card wool there - etc etc. I disliked the fact that the troop leader yelled at us all the time. My mom made me quit after she heard the troop leader swearing at us.
- How many years? Kindergarden through 6th grade
- What level? Junior
- Like? Dislike? Loved camping & cooking over the fire or in homemade solar ovens and such. Hated the rest, like learning how to take care of kids and sew sit-a-pons out of wallpaper samples and yarn so we wouldn’t get our precious bottoms dirty while sitting around the campfire. Also hated “Thinking Day”, where all the troups were supposed to research a country and give a little presentation/skit about it. Was always extremely poorly executed and contained no actual information. I always wanted to be in boy scouts, it seemed like they got to do the cool stuff with knives and compasses and fire.
- Gold award? Don’t even remember what that was.
- How many years? Kindergarden through 6th grade
- What level? Junior
- Like? Dislike? Loved camping & cooking over the fire or in homemade solar ovens and such. Hated the rest, like learning how to take care of kids and sew sit-a-pons out of wallpaper samples and yarn so we wouldn’t get our precious bottoms dirty while sitting around the campfire. Also hated “Thinking Day”, where all the troups were supposed to research a country and give a little presentation/skit about it. Was always extremely poorly executed and contained no actual information. I always wanted to be in boy scouts, it seemed like they got to do the cool stuff with knives and compasses and fire.
- Gold award? Don’t even remember what that was.