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From left, front of sash, me as a Cadet, and back of sash |
Purpose: To make different kinds of arts with your hands. Thus reads the opening line for the Dabbler Badge on page 326 of the Junior Girl Scout Handbook, copyright 1963.
As with almost everything, the desire to compete to win, to be the best, to achieve superlative status of all ilk, ran through the veins of the Girl Scout leaders who established troops in the town where I lived as a youngster.
Troop 10 was led by Mrs. McConnell, the undisputed champion in all things Girl Scout in nature. She had established her first troop at the Brownie level, and then flew her third grade girls, daughter Cathy among them, up to Juniors, leaving the younger Brownies to her co-leader’s management. In 1965, the Junior Girl Scouts level was a three-year program for third, fourth, and fifth graders.
During their first year, Troop 10 chose their troop seal, a sprig of Lily of the Valley, and immediately began working on both their Sign of the Arrow and Sign of the Star patches, which included earning six badges. By the time I joined at the start of their second year, I had a lot of work to do if I expected to earn those patches along with the other girls over the next nine months. I was not daunted. I could be pretty competitive myself when motivated.
In quick succession, I earned 12 badges: Backyard Fun, Collector, Cook, Dancer, Gypsy (how times have changed!), Health Aid, Needlecraft, Outdoor Cook, Songster, Troop Camper, Weaving and Basketry, and Our Own Troop’s Badge, which concerned water pollution in the Great Lakes. Half of these badges I did on my own with the help of my mother and grandmother, to catch up with the rest of the girls. The other half were in concert with the troop, as Mrs McConnell pressed her girls on to be the troop with the most earned badges.
After receiving our Sign of the Arrow and Sign of the Star patches, our sashes were resplendent with insignia. We were the envy of all the girls in the other troops. The next thing we worked on to bejewel our sashes was the World Association Pin.
By the end of my second year, Mrs. McConnell made sure we girls had added another seven badges to our sashes: Active Citizen, Folklore, My Community, Toymaker, Troop Dramatics, World Neighbor, and World Games. In addition, I personally added Housekeeper, Musician, Pen Pal, Sewing, and Skater for a total of 12 badges. And then, with her daughter no longer interested in Girls Scouts, our leader retired. Those of us with another year, or two in some cases, were left to complete Juniors with another troop. We were put in a lottery. I drew the short stick.
Mrs. Kantzer, by all accounts, including that of my closest friend who had been in her troop for a year, was a wretch.
I don’t remember the number of my new troop because my sash would forever be emblazoned with Troop 10–a constant reminder that I was from an enemy camp. I arrived at the first meeting sporting my array of badges as if it were Joseph’s coat of many colors. And though Mrs. Kantzer didn’t sell me for 20 pieces of silver, she did humiliate me in front of all the girls in her troop.
My third year of Girl Scouts, under the leadership of Mrs. Kantzer, started out well. As a troop, we worked on and earned three badges: My Trefoil, My Troop, and a second Our Own Troop’s Badge in bowling. On my own, I earned Writer, Storyteller, and Hospitality. I then began working on the Dabbler Badge.
The process of earning a badge requires the scout to complete a series of tasks. Each task, upon completion, is presented to the troop, and the leader then signs off on each task. When all the tasks are complete, the badge is earned. The Dabbler Badge had nine tasks. The last task was to Make a collage, mobile, or paper sculpture. I chose to make a collage.
I was in the sixth grade at this point, and had just received a second prize ribbon in an art contest at school, so was feeling very confident about my artistic abilities. Plus, my grandmother was a consummate artist and was always at hand to lend her considerable expertise about different art forms. It was during a visit to my grandmother’s that the theme of my collage–a vase of flowers made from magazine cuttings–was conceived. My mother subscribed to a myriad of magazines: Ladies Home Journal, McCall’s, Good Housekeeping, and Look, to name a few, so I had plenty of fodder from which to make my cuttings.
The day for the presentation of my final task for the Dabbler Badge arrived. I brought my collage to the gym at school, where our meetings were held. I explained the task, the idea for the collage, and the execution process. Before I had even finished with my presentation, Mrs. Kantzer spoke up. “That’s not a collage,” she stated.
I was twelve years old. I had been taught to never ever talk back to or disagree with a grown up. I knew what I had made was most certainly a collage, but I had no idea what to do in this moment. Mrs. Kantzer continued, “That’s just a bunch of cut up pieces of paper pasted together. It doesn’t make any sense.”
I began to cry.
“You haven’t made a collage at all. You don’t understand what a collage is. It’s not that thing,” she insisted while the girls of the troop all looked at me in wide-eyed horror.
I now started to sob.
Mrs. Kantzer then said, “You can go sit down. We’ll talk later about how to fix it so you can earn this badge.”
After the meeting, after the other girls, except my close friend, had left, Mrs. Kantzer said that she could tell I had thought I was doing a collage, and though I hadn’t actually done one, she was going to sign off on the badge anyway. She put her initials in my handbook and dated that the badge was complete.
On the walk home, my friend confided that Mrs. Kantzer had made other girls cry as well. It was small comfort.
As a troop, we completed two more badges: My Home and Observer, and I did two more: Books and Water Fun on my own. But, the zeal for earning badges had been destroyed.
The ordeal of being so publicly and wrongly rebuked, however, instilled in me a burning desire to prove to myself that I knew damn well what a collage was. When I earned my master’s degree in art, collage was the medium of my final thesis project.
Copyright DJ Anderson, 2022
