Up in the sky ... it’s M-Bird to the rescue!

While I was little, I was aware that I just never quite measured up to what my mother had hoped I would be. She hoped for a little girly-girl who wore dresses, black patent leather shoes, and had tea parties with dolls. She hoped for a little girly-girl who wanted to play dress-up and beauty parlor and school teacher. I think she hoped for a girly-girl just like herself; not because she thought it was better or more appropriate but because that’s the kind of little girl she was and it was familiar to her.

Sadly, she was cursed with a daughter who, although not tom-boyish was far from interested in dolls, didn’t care what she wore or what her hair looked like, and had no use for anything resembling black patent leather shoes. I couldn’t have been more unlike my mother. I think I more resembled my aunt – Momma’s sister – because my entire life my mother has called me by my aunt’s name. You know how, when getting excited or angry while talking to you, your mother stumbles across every name in the book – brother, aunt, sister in law, cousin, family dog - except your own and finally you say, “Jacque, Mom. My name is Jacque. It’s J-A-C-Q-U-E. Remember me??” Sometimes I wondered if my mother regretted giving me that name because she never used it. I can remember her calling me “Muffin” sometimes. But then I had to wonder about that as well when we got a new puppy and my mother named her “Muffin”.

My mother tried very hard to present me with a “typical” girly-girl upbringing. She exposed me to all the expected events and opportunities that she felt were important for a girl to experience. She enrolled me in Brownie Scouts (the pre-Girl Scout training group that is supposed to get you ready to be a real Cookie Mogule). I wore a little brown uniform with the little snap-on, orange tie. My uniform was always getting torn, stained with magic marker, or splattered with chocolate ice cream. My mother faithfully taxied me around to all the events, helped me earn all the badges, and baked more cupcakes than Betty Crocker.

What I enjoyed most about Brownie Scouts was all the arts and crafts we got to do. The den mother-of-the-week was always showing us something super nifty like how to make pencil holders from frozen orange juice containers, how to make puppets from empty toilet paper tubes, and how to sew pieces of cardboard into the shapes of boxes by using pretty colored yarn. I was in it for arts & crafts and snack time. I tried to disguise my love for the snacks. But everyone knew all the leftover animal crackers, cookies, or caramel corn was probably in my pockets.

One year, for Mother’s Day, we were given white circles of paper onto which we could draw something for our mothers. I drew a house in a yard with the sun shinning up in the sky and lots of birds flying around. I knew my mother liked birds. She was gonna LOVE this. It took 2 weeks before the white paper circles were returned to us. I was astounded to see that my artwork had been fused to a white plate. My picture – the picture I drew – it was now on a plate! How super incredible was that??!! I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was!! I snuck it home in my Brownie Bag because it was supposed to be a surprise. I got my Daddy to help me wrap it up for Mother’s day. That was like asking a three-legged dog to square dance. But somehow we got it wrapped and I made a card telling my mother how much I loved her. I had such visions in my head of giving her this beautiful plate and her being so impressed – finally – with something girly I had done! I could hardly contain myself.

Finally Sunday came around and it was time to jump into bed with Momma and give her our Mother’s Day presents. I don’t even know what my brother or father gave her. I purposefully waited until last. And finally, with a big flourish, I presented her with my gift. She was smiling and laughing and opened it up. “Ohhhhh, Abbie-Bobby-Eddie-Tommy-Jamie-Muffin ... I mean, Jacque! Oohhh Jacque, how wonderful! It’s a beautiful plate and look at this drawing you made! OOooohhh ... and look at all the letter M’s scattered around in the sky!! They’re for ‘Mother’s Day’, right? Oh honey, it’s beautiful!”

“M’s” for Mother’s Day? Was she blind? I was heartbroken. My artistic talent was so bad that my mother mistook my birds for M’s. “No. They’re not M’s, Momma. They’re BIRDS ... like BIRDS in the sky ... where BIRDS belong ... you know, BIRDS??!!”

“Oh?” she said as she looked at it critically. “Oh, well that’s just great, too, honey! M-Birds – for Mother’s Day! Thank you ... blah, blah, blah...” Whatever else she said was lost to me as I started to hear my brother laughing in the background. It was then I realized I had no future as an artist. If I couldn’t even draw some birds that didn’t look like the letter M then I sure wasn’t going to have a career as an artist.

After Brownie Scouts, I was finally promoted to Girl Scouts and got the super nifty green uniform. Yet another canvas for my artistic expression of how little regard I had for my clothing. I was happy to be a girl scout until it was time to sell cookies. I just wanted to eat them. I didn’t want to be bothered with trying to convince other people that they wanted to eat them, too. And I finally lost my drive to be involved in the Girl Scouts when, upon arriving at summer camp, I learned it would be expected that I sleep outside ... like, in the woods ... like on the ground and in the dark and surrounded by bugs.

My mother spent WEEKS of her time investing in propaganda to get me excited about going off to summer camp. We went shopping for items I would need – shopping being another activity I despised to my mother’s dismay – picked out clothing I would wear, selected the sleeping bag I would use, and talked for hours about what you do at camp. I had visions of somebody’s nice, comfy den and lots of my friends crowded around at a sleep over eating popcorn, candy, more girl scout cookies and drinking milk shakes. Her propaganda campaign worked. I was pumped and ready for summer camp!

We drove to the camp up in the mountains early on a Friday morning. She escorted me through the lines and got me signed up for everything. Then she hugged and kissed me goodbye, ordered me to be “a good girl”, and drove off. She left me in the mountains in the middle of the girl scout camp surrounded by a bunch of other scouts and their mothers. I went to my “shelter” and discovered the bunk bed I was supposed to sleep on. It was spider infested. There were leaves inside the shelter. Everything had that mildew smell about it. And I didn’t know the other 3 girls in my shelter. Then I had to potty. I followed the signs down the path to the “restroom”. It didn’t improve my mood to discover it was open to the elements, leaves and twigs blocked the drains, and the toilet seats were freezing cold. There were shower curtains in there. I was confused. If they didn’t care enough to put a roof on the building, what use was a shower curtain?

I managed to make it through the first day. I even tried to paste a smile on my face and pretend that I was interested in all the dumb stuff the other girls were talking about. I put on my swimming suit but then refused to go swimming because I couldn’t see the bottom of the lake through the water and God only knew what kind of sneaky snakes were down there. I stood in line to play games and got picked last for every single one of them. Did I mention that I wasn’t very popular? Not a one of my friends from my scout group was at this camp. Not one of them showed up even though they promised they would be there, too. I was alone and quickly plunging into a hellish misery that was no where near living up to the propaganda campaign I bought – hook, line, and sinker – from my mother.

The next day I was informed that we would be camping out – like sleeping on a bunk bed in a 2-sided “shelter” wasn’t camping out enough – under the stars, out in the open, on the ground and eating hotdogs we cooked for ourselves on a stick. Sound like fun? The mention of chocolate and marshmallow s’mores is what lured me into the depths of outdoor camping hell. Damn those s’mores and their graham-crackery goodness. I did ok and felt rather proud of myself for making it that far. I skipped the hot dogs and filled up on chips from a bag. At least I know they started their life in a sterile environment. I ate enough s’mores to fill a horse. And then it got dark. And someone decided it would be fun to tell scary stories. And someone else wanted to sing. What was wrong with these people? Why couldn’t we just watch a little “Hee-Haw” and call it a night?

Did I mention it got dark? Quickly? Real dark real quick. I was expected to get into my sleeping bag with my clothes on. But what about all the dirt on my clothes? I’d have to sleep in it? I didn’t have a pillow. Was I supposed to put my head down on the dirt? I tried to line up some sticks in front of my sleeping bag, thinking that if something dangerous snuck up on me it might step on a stick and the cracking sound it made would wake me up in time to fight it off with my Girl Scout Spork from my mess kit. But to my horror, there was nothing with which to defend the threshold of my sleeping bag from creepy crawling bugs that would surely overrun me in the darkness of the night. I was terrified. This was no longer fun. This was warfare. I had to protect myself. I was wishing I hadn’t eaten all those s’mores because the niggling feeling in the back of my tummy was heralding the possibility of a whole new nightmare of pottying in the woods. My mind couldn’t go there. I stayed awake all night staring at the threshold of my sleeping bag. I used my little pocket flashlight until the battery ran out. Now why hadn’t my mother made sure that batteries were on the shopping list?!

When the sun came up I had had enough. I was done with camping. It was over for me. I had experienced all I was willing to endure. I started crying and sobbing and begging the scout masters to call my mother. I refused to listen to their attempts to comfort and soothe me. I would just look at them and cry some more. Did those green-clad bitches think I was going to buy any more propaganda about the wonderful experience of Scouting?? I think not. Get my momma on the phone and you get her up here right now, do you hear me?? I AM GOING HOME! I came very close to exploding that day.

So my mother came and got me. It took her long enough. I thought she’d never get there. I hurled myself into the car in a panic and ordered her to drive ... DRIVE ... and continued to cry big sobbing tears so she couldn’t talk to me in case she was going to try to convince me to stay another night. I wanted to go home. Period. So she took me home. And that, to my utter relief, was the end of scouts.

But the nightmare of trying to walk in the shadows and live up to her Shirley Temple childhood memories was not over yet ....


To Be Continued

Don’t ya just hate that?!