Pretty in Plaid: A Life, A Witch, and a Wardrobe, or, the Wonder Years Before the Condescending,Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smart-Ass Phase

by Jen Lancaster

  Because my extended family makes everything a party, when there’s an actual event to be celebrated, ’tis a sight to behold. This particular bash boasts a seated dinner for three hundred, a giant dance floor, a live band, an ice sculpture, and an enormous pink mountain of shrimp. There’s a vast wall of presents for my grandparents and someone even got President Carter to send my Noni and Grampa an anniversary card.13

  I’m profoundly enjoying the sparkling apple cider provided for the kids’ table when I notice my brother hitting up my dad for a dollar to buy a soda at the cash bar. We don’t keep many carbonated beverages in our house except for the undrinkable stuff like tonic water, so having a Coke is a real treat for my brother. I watch as Dad opens his thick brown leather wallet and without a second thought or any kind of negotiation hands my brother a couple of bills.

  Hold the phone—Toad got money just for saying he was thirsty?

  I’ve got to get in on this action.

  “Hi, Daddy,” I say, sidling up in such a way as to highlight what a delightful young lady I am in my fabulous mint green dotted Swiss gown with batwing sleeves and my white patent leather Mary Janes. “I’m thirsty and so’s cousins Stephanie and Karla. Can I have a couple of dollars to get us all a Coke?”

  My dad smiles and whips out a five-dollar bill.

  Whoa. Do you know how many times I’d have to wash his car and vacuum the family room to get five bucks?

  “You can keep the change,” he says, ruffling my hair.

  You can bet your ass I will.

  I don’t actually like soda, so I don’t go to the bar at all. Stephanie and Karla are probably swiping champagne off the grown-up tables, anyway.

  I do like five-dollar bills, though. A lot.

  I scan the crowd to spot my next victim. “Uncle Tony? I want to get a Seven-Up. Can you give me a dollar, pleeeeease? I can’t find my daddy to ask him.” Uncle Tony obliges in much the same way my father did, and now I’m up ten dollars. Sweet.

  “Hey, cousin Mark? I can’t find my father and I want to get a root beer. Can I have a dollar?”

  “I’m going to the bar; I’ll get you one,” he replies kindly.

  “No!” I exclaim, desperately trying to find a way to spin this. “No, no. You sit, relax. Take it easy. I’ll go for you.”

  He shrugs. “Okay, here’s ten bucks—get me and your cousin Steven a Heineken and whatever you want for yourself. Keep the change.” Ding, ding, ding, score.

  Never doubt the power of a little girl in a party dress!

  The bartender serves me the two beers—apparently I’m a very mature-looking eight14—and I return to Mark’s table with his beers and a tidy seven-dollar profit.

  I learn pretty quickly to ask only male relatives after a disappointing and potentially disastrous reaction from my aunties. One grilled me about whether my mother knew I was drinking so much sugar and the other told me it was rude to ask anyone for money. They must be immune to the cute overload that is me in dotted Swiss.

  In the next half hour, I make almost seventy dollars, but my run of good luck ends when my uncle Jimmy generously throws down a handful of bills and opens the bar.

  Damn. Shoulda tapped Uncle Jimmy.

  The next morning my mother finds my bankroll next to my bed and is aghast when she hears where it came from. I try to explain money is “really sort of a gift if you think about it,” but she’s not hearing any of it. She confiscates my cash and I never see it again.

  I suspect she uses it to buy groceries.

  God help her if she comes home with any more lime marmalade.

  How About a Nice Hawaiian Punch?

  (Girl Scout Uniform)

  I’ve waited all year to break free from this pack of losers and this is finally, finally my chance. Today’s my last Brownie meeting and I’m preparing to fly up to the (attractively uniformed) Girl Scouts. I don’t think we actually get to fly, but if we do, I will apologize for so clearly misjudging the Brownies.

  I’m on pins and needles all during the Color Guard ceremony. Pledge your allegiance to this flag a little faster, ladies; I’m aging as we speak here.

  My friends Donna and Stacey—the only Brownies worth knowing—flank me on our spot on the stage in the church auditorium. We’re listening to the troop leader drone on about the Brownie Forest and leadership and pride and blah blah blah. All I can hear are my own thoughts and they’re saying, Give me the damn sash already!

  A lot of our parents are in the audience. My mom is toward the back because I’m sure she was late even though we live just down the street. Both Donna’s parents are in the front row. Her dad owns a bar and a package store, so he could come because he sets his own hours.15 My dad isn’t here because he’s working, and also, I suspect he’s about as into the Brownies as I am.

  We’re standing by what the leader calls a “magic pond,” but it’s surrounded by plants and we can’t see in it. I’m pretty sure there’s aluminum foil on it though, and what’s more magical than Reynolds Wrap? On the other side of it, there’s a bridge festooned with plastic flowers. Each of us is called over individually to give the pledge and we have to recite a verse.

  Zzzzzz . . . wake me when it’s sash time, won’t you?

  When my name’s called, I repeat the same tired rhyme everyone else has about the twisting and the turning and the showing of elves, and then I look in the water and I see—

  Holy shit, that’s me! I see me! I see myself! Which rhymes with elf.

  This pond is magic!

  How on earth . . .

  Oh. Wait. There’s a mirror in there. Still, you got me, Brownies. Well played. Perhaps if you’d incorporated a bit more magic or hadn’t been quite so stingy when pouring the Hawaiian Punch, I may have been more supportive of your organization.

  Pond business complete, I walk across the bridge, which is supposed to be symbolic except I’m pretty sure it was built out of an orange crate and I kind of can’t get past that fact, especially since it still smells like Florida. Seriously, could we not have, like, enlisted the Boy Scouts to put something together for us? Or spent one less day making wallets and instead learned how to swing a hammer?

  We finish up by singing “The Brownie Smile Song” and then do a chorus of “Make New Friends.” Yeah, I’ll get right on that.

  I am deeply disappointed when the ceremony is over and I learn we’re not going to receive our uniforms here and now. Rather, my mother will have to go to a supply shop over the summer to purchase the pieces. But I do get a snappy gold Girl Scout insignia pin to go on my sash once my mom buys it and a boss set of embroidered wings.

  So that’s a start.

  “That? Was a pain in the butt,” I declare, hands patting the back pockets of my denim Toughskins for emphasis.

  My friend Donna’s holding her Girl Scout manual and nodding in agreement, her fat black braids bouncing off her back. We’re in her sunny L-shaped kitchen, sitting in the rattan chairs by the bay window. We’re both exhausted from having just completed the requirement for our cooking badge. Today’s experiment involved boiling water, eggs, strained patience on her mother’s part, a little bit of screaming, and one first-degree burn. As soon as we finished, Donna’s mom took her dad’s pack of cigarettes and went outside to smoke, which is kind of odd because she’s not a smoker. We can see her from where we’re sitting—she’s cross-legged on their patio and she keeps puffing and rocking back and forth.

  Well, what did she expect when she tried to teach a couple of fourth graders to make egg salad?

  Donna and I had to complete an entire litany of tedious steps to earn the embroidered patch. I’d say the effort (and blister) wasn’t worth it, but have you seen a sash laden with badges and pins? It’s glorious! It’s like Christmas and Halloween and a birthday, where I don’t get a guilt-inducing big-headed doll, all rolled together and then dipped in powdered sugar!

  Every time we complete a badge, we bring our page of signatures to our troop leader, Mrs. McCoy. She examines
them and orders the respective badge, which we get after a couple of weeks. When they arrive, we have a quick awards ceremony and take our fabulous prizes home, where our mothers sew them on our sashes, or, in my mother’s case, pin them on my sash because she’s too busy sewing a bunch of other junk that I don’t want to wear.

  In my opinion, we’re not doing nearly enough in our meetings to fill up our sashes. A lot of times Mrs. McCoy veers from the badge-earning part of the manual and wants to teach us lessons about “friendship” and “faith.”

  Friendship and faith are not going to fill my sash, woman! I don’t want to learn; I want to earn. Let’s get with the program already, McCoy! In a perfect world, our scout meetings would morph into little ad hoc badge sweatshops, thirty beret-covered heads bent in concentration and achievement.16

  My mom volunteered to be one of the assistant troop leaders and she’s taking it way too seriously. She’s always referring to bits of the Girl Scout code when I don’t do exactly what she wants, like if I complain when Todd slinks off and I’m stuck with a sink full of dinner dishes to do by myself, she’ll say, “A Girl Scout is friendly and helpful,” or if I whisper something in Stacey’s ear, she’ll be all, “Girl Scouts don’t tell secrets.” Pfft, they do if they have good dirt on someone! And really? I’m in it for the badges, not some arcane code of ethics.

  When I get home from Donna’s, I tell my mom about our experiment and she signs off on my badge without question.

  Hmm.

  This is the first time I’ve participated in a badge-earning activity without her, and yet she didn’t demand an egg salad sandwich as proof. She just blithely believed me.

  Hmm, again.

  I quickly thumb through my guidebook and catch a glimpse of the badge for art. It looks like a painter’s palette covered in little daubs of brightly colored dots. I really, really dig the aesthetics of this badge. And I want it. A lot.

  You know . . . Donna and I did color at her house and that is kind of artistic—not today, but one time. At some point. I’m pretty sure. And that kind of satisfies one of the badge requirements, right?

  “Hey, Mom?” I ask. “We also did this one today.” I point at one of the entries on the page. “Can you sign off?”

  “Weren’t you the busy little Girl Scout today?” she replies with a trusting smile before scrawling a “JL” in the margin.

  “Yes. Yes, I was,” I agree, bobbing my head with great sincerity.

  Sucker.

  From this moment on, every time I’m out of her sight for more than an hour, I return with heroic tales of badge-completing feats. Her signatures begin to rack up on the page and at the next award ceremony, I take home four new embroidered beauties.

  I thrill over how these badges feel in my palm and I run my fingers over them all the way home.

  However, once I get to my house and we affix them to my sash, I’m less excited. I have only five little badges, which are supposed to be sewn on in rows of three. I don my sash and drag a kitchen chair into the bathroom so I can stand up and see myself in the mirror properly.

  Huh.

  I turn back and forth, examining myself from all angles. Suddenly, this is a lot less thrilling. My badges don’t look symmetrical, despite the fine tailoring of the rest of my uniform. Plus there’s a ton of blank green space between where the badges end and the bottom of the sash.

  I scowl at my reflection.

  No. No, this won’t do at all. These badges are a mere thimbleful of water in an ocean of merit. My sash isn’t the source of pride that I’d expected it to be. Rather, it’s a testament to everything I’ve yet to accomplish. I see myself in this sash and I feel at loose ends, incomplete, a washed-up ex-hippie at eight.

  Then, out of nowhere, I’m struck with divine inspiration. Could it really be that easy? Could I honestly solve my existential angst with a few quick slashes of ink?

  I get off my chair and return it to the kitchen. Then I take a pad of paper and a pen and practice writing the initials “JL” over and over again until they’re identical to all the other signatures in my manual.

  Forgery; the victimless crime.

  Mrs. McCoy seems kind of sad when she hands over my stack of new badges during the ceremony, and later she prattles on about the importance of honesty while we work on yet another stupid hand-sewn wallet. I sip my Hawaiian Punch and do my best to ignore her gimlet gaze. A number of Scouts are sheepish and I take comfort in knowing I’m probably not the only liar of the group.

  Besides, I’ve just scored enough badges to fill up the entire front of my sash. I will no longer be mistaken for some lowly cadet—instead I’m going to look like the colonel of the Girl Scouts! Admiral Lancaster, at your service!

  Mrs. McCoy tells us she has a surprise—today we get our order forms because we’re going to start selling cookies! A mighty cheer erupts from our group; who doesn’t love Girl Scout cookies? Is there anything more decadent than the sweet ambrosia of a frozen Thin Mint melting in your mouth while you wash it down with a rich creamy glass of whole milk? Is there anything more comforting than a few Shortbreads served with a golden cup of tea on a snowy afternoon? Or can there be a more perfect pairing than the chocolate and peanut butter in the Tagalong?17

  I run all the way home after the meeting in order to affix my new badges to my sash. I want to be at my Girl Scouty best when I ring doorbells in the name of my troop. My mom helps me with the safety pins and then lickety-split, I’m out the door with my vibrant sales brochure, depicting all the cookies’ deliciousness in full color.

  As I head down my street, I feel a swell of pride every time I glance down at my magnificent sash. Yes. This is exactly how I’d hoped it would be. I brush away any niggling thoughts I have about not really earning my badges, as no one knows my dirty little secret.

  I knock on my closest neighbors’ doors first. Mrs. Schneider across the street obliges with a few boxes of Shortbread—excellent with tea, I remind her—and Mrs. DeGeorge stocks up on the sandwich and chocolate chip varieties. I appreciate her order, but honestly, the chocolate chips are the only clunkers in the bunch. They tend to be dry and the chip-to-cookie ratio is less than desirable. Regardless, I thank her for her patronage and I move on. I get a few more orders and a handful of refusals.

  Refusals?

  Seriously?

  How do you say no to the Girl Scouts? How do you not support an organization that instills such values in young girls? Frankly, I’m appalled when I begin to receive far more nays than yeas.

  The afternoon drags on and I’m discouraged by my results after the initial few sales to friends and neighbors. Honestly? I’m ready to call it quits. I’ve moved an adequate amount and have more than satisfied any sales requirements. Besides, I’m tired, and after all this cookie talk, I’m getting really hungry. Granted, my mother will tell me to have an apple, but even fruit would be better than the rumbling going on down there right now. I’m going to make one more stop and that will be it.

  I’m at the gray house with black shutters on the crest of the hill that leads down the street and into the rich neighborhood one block over. I don’t know these folks, but their landscaping is lovely. When I walk Samantha, I’m mindful to never let her drop a bomb on their lawn.

  I knock and a middle-aged lady I’ve never seen before opens the door. She’s wearing a sweat suit and a big gold cross around her neck. I give her my whole pitch and she’s totally into it, nodding and smiling. But before I get her to commit to any boxes, she begins to ask me about my sash, because, really, who wouldn’t? I’m talking glorious here, people.

  The lady points to a badge on the third row, second one in. “That’s a pretty badge. What does it stand for?”

  Primarily red and purple, this badge depicts people doing . . . something. Archery maybe? “Um . . . ,” I stammer. “I kind of forget.”

  “Oh. Well, then, how about that one?” She gestures toward a sunny yellow one at the bottom of the sash. There’s a cup on it with steam ri
sing out of it.

  “Tea making?” This comes out as a question and not a statement.

  She scrunches up her forehead and her hand idly adjusts her necklace. “And this one with the flag?”

  I scramble to come up with a reasonable-sounding answer. “I, um, got that one because I love America.”

  “What about this one with the boiling cauldron?” Her lips begin to flatten into a straight line.

  I draw a total blank. A cauldron? I’ve got a merit badge with a cauldron on it? Think, self, think. When would someone use a cauldron? I mentally snap my Hawaiian Punch-stained fingers. I’ve got it. “Witchcraft!”

  Her friendliness begins to dissipate. “I see.”

  Desperate to change the direction of this conversation, which is so clearly getting away from me, I ask, “Which cookies would you like?”

  She hesitates before answering. “I’m going to pass today.” She thanks me for stopping by and then quietly closes the door.

  As I retreat down her driveway, my sash begins to feel a lot less impressive. It feels . . . heavy, kind of like it’s pulling down my neck and shoulders with the weight of all those new badges. And suddenly those small pangs of guilt I’d been able to sweep into the corner of my mind come to the forefront. The guilt’s now too big to push aside with a broom. It sits there right in the center of my mind and my chest, immobile as a boulder.