Technically, I’m not a Girl Scout leader anymore.  After 5 years, I’d gotten chewed out enough for a volunteer position that I decided to cut all ties and walk away from the organization.  The girls however, were a different story.  I’d spent an hour or more, with them every other week for the last 5 years.  I consider them partially my own girls.  I promised them we’d continue to do something together this year and left it open.  I was thinking we’d touch base once a month, maybe do a book club.  We got together after school started and they laid out what they’d like to do.  Turns out they still wanted to meet every other week, they still wanted me to come up with a plan for them to pitch out the window, so for all intents and purposes, we were pretty much doing the same thing we’ve been doing, only with no organizational oversight and no name.

“Well, it should have the word Unicorn in it” said Clare very matter of factly  to much agreement in the forms of nodding, shrugging and a few muttered ‘of course’ among the girls.  There may have even been a ‘no duh’ among them.  There was a lively discussion that followed where the word “Rainbow” was thrown out – too obvious.  The word “Cupcakes” upset the pie fans & vice versa.  Same think with “Pink” or “Purple” Unicorns.  Sigh.  Finally, towards the end of our first meeting, someone came up with “Unicorn Revolution”.  Of course.  It was mostly met with approval (we have one girl who doesn’t like it and has decided to go with her own name, but we told her this was not the US Congress, we lead by majority vote) and thus was born the Unicorn Revolution.

It’s a perfect name for my non-conforming former girl scouts.  So far this year we have met after school, walked to the park and mostly hung out in the woods behind the park.  They also like to play in the sprinklers – at least two of them bring bathing suits along, just in case.  We had talked about doing some crafts together, but I was told this week “No thanks” to that idea.  We are going to try out being a book club once a month, with an Agatha Cristie book selected for discussion at our next meeting.  When I asked what they expected us to do when the weather got chilly and we couldn’t hang out at the park, I was informed “go to your house and hang out”.  At least two other girls volunteered their homes as well, but I gently reminded them they might want to clear it with their mothers first.  Also, I need to find some service projects because when not hanging out discussing how they are going to overthrow authority, they like to help others.

After 5 years of being told by the girl scouts that I was supposed to follow the lead of my girls only to be told that I wasn’t correctly following the lead of my girls because they didn’t want to do journeys or crafts and they only wanted to sell cookies they made themselves and not the factory made version where the organization kept most of the money (which may have led to the discussion of a plot by my girls to change this) or any of the other thing girl scouts are supposed to do, it feels good to truly be able to follow the lead of my girls.  Which is to hang out, have snacks and lots of laughs.  The mission of girl scouts is supposedly to mold girls into future leaders.  The catch is, they tell you you the mold the girls are supposed to fit in.  As proper strong future leaders, my girls refused to fit.

Long live the Unicorn Revolution.