The Puddles

When the negative side of humanity rears its ugly head at events starring Girl Scouts or the church, people (especially myself) are often surprised. You would think that at event sponsored by organization that have such wonderful values as part of their core teachings that everyone at every time would exhibit those values. But people are people and they still behave poorly on occasion.

We (myself, Grandma G., Ainsley, and Madie) attended the BIG event yesterday. It was awesome (pictures to be posted later). All day the girls kept seeing girls with colored stripes in their hair. We couldn’t figure out which booth this was. By the afternoon, the girls started asking around to see where these girls had their hair colored. Finally 45 minutes before the end of the day, we found the booth. We got in line and Madie and her buddy started chatting with the mother/daughter in front of us. At 10 minutes before the end of the day, four girls cut in line in front of the mother/daughter team. The mother told the girls that they can’t cut in line. This group of girls spoke disrespectfully to the mother and said something about that those girls were from their troop and that they could join them if they wanted too. I am thinking that those girls are being awfully rude, but it is the end of the day and I’m trying not to make a ruckus. Right when Madie and her buddy get to the table . . . the troop leader running the booth tells us that they are shutting the booth down because it is the end of the day. I go to the booth leader and tell her about the girls cutting in line and that if they hadn’t my girls would have had their hair done. We had been waiting 45 minutes and the girl cut in line 10 minutes ago. The leader says that it is not her problem and that she didn’t see the girls cut, so there was nothing she could do. I asked her to please just do my girls hair and help them out. She refused. There was one girl left from that troop and I asked her where her leader was. She said she didn’t know (yeah right). But I was not willing to bully a teenager and really wanted to take up my issue with the troop leader of the girls who cut in line. I never did find that troop. I was furious. My girls are devastated and I just want someone to show some humanity for this situation and put a smile back on my girls’ faces. (After we walked away, the booth kept doing other girls hair and one of my troop moms saw it. She went over to the booth to see if they would do my girls hair and they STILL refused.)

So I could either let this situation ruin our day which would be a shame, or I could find those evil teenagers and take my fury out on them which would bring me down to their level, or I could look for the positive and set a good example for my girls. I chose option 3. So even though the girls were so upset, we talked about the good of the event. 1. if we hadn’t stood in line, we never would have met the mother/daughter duo in front of us. They were really awesome and we made some new friends. 2. We now know what it feels like to have someone’s callous actions hurt us tremendously, and we can vow to never do that to anyone else.

So at the end of the day, the girls and I didn’t let this event define us or our day. And since all of the girls in my group spent the night with us last night, we stopped at the drug store on the way home and bought pink and purple hair dye (washable). And I streaked all of their hair. We ended up having a really great time and the girls all wore their “Rocker Chick” look to church today. In the end, only we can let someone ruin our day and we decided we weren’t going to let them. We had a really good day.