Marjorie Turner Hollman is a writer who loves the outdoors. Link to all Marjorie’s books.
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I was a contrary child, picky about many so-called “normal foods” such as peas and carrots, green beans, broccoli or onions. I did, however, adore liver, spinach, and prunes. It was not an easy childhood.
One day, however, I made a choice that would change my life. It would later change how I raised my own children. The jury is still out about whether my children are grateful. What I know is that they heard many times the story I am about to tell you. If their friends joined us for lunch and I mentioned the rule we had at our house, the visitor always asked, “What’s a…” and my kids would cut the question short. “Don’t tell the story, Mom. We’ll explain it.” Their rendition was always abbreviated. My version is a little longer.
Here goes:
The summer I was twelve my mother suggested I might enjoy going to the Girl Scout camp she had attended as a teenager, Camp Isabella Ingram (Camp Inky). She tempted me with stories of learning to canoe and sail. I would live in cabins in the woods with girls my own age. I was sold.
Everything my mother told me was true. I learned to sail, and loved tooling around Santa Rosa Sound in Pensacola in the tubby little sail boats that were ready and waiting each morning after breakfast. The boats leaned to the left, resting on the sandy beach, waiting for us to ready our tillers and sails, then push off into the salt water of the sound.
I dove right into the challenges of learning all the parts of a canoe, and paid strict attention to my paddling technique. Soon I was feathering my paddle and administering the peanut butter and jelly stroke like a pro.
There was so much singing—after all, Girl Scouts are known for their songs, many of which I had grown up with. We had great fun doing skits in the evening, and put lots of energy and creativity into King Neptune’s Ball.
It was the details my mother failed to mention to me that tripped me up. Cold showers for two weeks, in bathrooms with metal stalls were…bracing. I learned to soap up, rinse as fast as I could, and was (mostly) successful in avoiding the sheet metal sides of the stall which added an extra chill to the experience of unheated showering.
And the food. It had not occurred to my 12 year old mind that if I was staying at camp for two weeks that I would have to eat. There would be no brown bag lunches from home.
The breakfasts weren’t too bad, even though it was always oatmeal. We were allowed to add as many raisins and as much brown sugar and milk as we wanted. I had a little oatmeal with my raisins, milk and brown sugar. One meal down.
I can’t remember lunches, so they must not have been too strange for my tastes. But the water. Being an old camp, (we were the last campers to use the cabins that had been built in the 1930s), the pipes were also old, with high level of iron in the water that left the plastic drinking glasses with a brown stain at the bottom of each glass. The water tasted like rust. We had no worries about our iron levels. But this was North Florida, in the middle of summer. The salt water and the heat gave us a thirst that was unquenchable. And so we drank. If I held my nose the metallic tang of the water disappeared. That is, the water was ok until I finally had to breathe through my nose again. One breath and it tasted like I had chewed on a handful of nails.
But it was the suppers that were my downfall. Nightly, all the vegetables I had so neatly avoided at home arrived, overcooked, in steaming bowls. Dinner brought a new vegetable challenge each night. The camp rule was, if you didn’t care for something, you still had to take a “Girl Scout bite.” Translation: the unwelcome food had to be visually identifiable on your plate. Infinitesimal dots of unrecognizable vegetable matter did not count. No exceptions, no escape.
Camp was so much fun I didn’t even think too much about supper and the food challenges I would face until it was time to head into the dining hall each evening. I learned to get the ordeal over with and enjoy the fun. I loved Camp Inky.
But walking into the dining hall that last night of camp, the smell put my “picky eater” antennae on full alert. Baked beans. Oh, no. This was much worse than green beans or even the broccoli. Mealy, squashy, simply awful. I prepared to take as small a “Girl Scout bite” as I could get away with. We sang a blessing first, the nightly ritual, and as the notes faded, I made a grab for the serving spoon.
The camp director had chosen that night to sit directly across from me. She saw me reach with energy for the baked beans, and must have misunderstood my hurry for enthusiasm. She smiled, reached for the spoon and said, “Here, let me dish some up for you.” Too late, I cried, “Just a Girl Scout bite!” The beans filled half my plate. My life flashed before my eyes.
Staring at the hated beans, I wondered how I would ever be allowed to leave the table. The horror of staring at a plate filled with food I could not bear is a memory I can still conjure easily. What happened afterwards is a blank. How I got through that dinner remains a mystery to me, but obviously, I did. And I didn’t die.
My mother was pleasantly surprised when, at the first dinner she served me, instead of hearing “I don’t like that,” she heard, “Could I just have a Girl Scout bite?” She checked to be sure she had gotten back the same daughter she had sent to camp.
Other than being browner, I appeared pretty much the same. But I had changed. No, I didn’t become a child who ate everything, but I had learned that if something was unfamiliar, I could always try a “Girl Scout bite.” And sometimes, sometimes, it wasn’t so bad. Especially if I dished it up myself.
Marjorie
Marjorie Turner Hollman is a writer who loves the outdoors, and is the author of Easy Walks in Massachusetts, 2nd edition, More Easy Walks in Massachusetts, 2nd edition, Easy Walks and Paddles in the Ten Mile River Watershed, Easy Walks South of Boston and Finding Easy Walks Wherever You Are. Her memoir, the backstory of Easy Walks, is My Liturgy of Easy Walks: Reclaiming hope in a world turned upside down.
Marjorie Turner Hollman 