I Used to be a Girl Scout

Poppin' some antibiotics.... coughin' my lungs up... nothing says bloggin' while laying on the couch, sick as a dog.  Here goes.

When I was in elementary school my best friend, B, was in Girl Scouts (GS) and kept raving about the camping trips.  Growing up in a military household and always being stationed, this was never an option for me.  We never knew when we would be moving.  I wanted to do everything B did (especially camping) and so I decided to join.  The meetings were held in a church directly across from my elementary school.  And the only way to get back into the classroom was to enter through the front and follow the maze of hallways....  this was the only way to exit the church as well. 

One might think that this was no big deal.  Well, let me tell you that this church was also a funeral home.  And the funeral parlor was right off the main hallway, right by the entrance.  When you are little and your parents just drop you off at the front door to walk to GSs alone, you become scared.  Add a dark hallway and a bunch of caskets and you become mortified.  While I desperately wanted to go camping with B and the rest of the GS I become so close to, I never wanted to go to the meetings.  But, in order to go camping I had to attend a certain amount of meetings.

I remember how lucky I felt when I would get dropped off at the exact time that one of my other friends was being dropped off... This helped subside the fear a lot.  Sometimes I would just wait into the foyer until someone else came.  Most times I would conjure up my courage and just walk/run to the meeting room.  It usually looked something like this:

1. Walk into the foyer.
2. Walk down the hall until I got to the door of the funeral parlor room.
3. Stop at the door and wait for ___ mins. (varied by how brave I was feeling)
4. Hold my breath.
5. Peer into the room.
6. See open casket.
7. Run past the door and down the hallway. 
8. Round the corner.
9. Stop running.
10. Start breathing.
11. Walk to meeting room.
12. Repeat on the way back if walking back alone.

I look back and laugh about how scared I used to be walking past the funeral parlor.  I will never know if there were dead bodies in the caskets - I would assume not, but one can never be sure.  One thing that I will always wonder though... why I wouldn't just ask my parents to walk me into the meeting room.