Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Believe it or not, gentle readers, I was a member of the girlscouts of america for almost a decade. For several summers during my adolescence, I attended Trefoil Ranch - a beucollic little camp tucked away in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. I rode a lot of horses. I consumed potentially dangerous quantities of putrid institutional fare. I wallowed in calamine lotion in a futile attempt to slake the indidious slew of mosquito bites that populated my face, limbs, and torso.

And I loved every minute of it.

Two kinds of girls went to girlscout camp: those who shaved their legs, and those who didn't. The camp's shower facilities were, in a word, lacking. Heated water was a luxury that Trefoil Ranch simply couldn't afford. In fact, water in general seemed in constant short supply. The counselors restricted our bathing privilages to one 3 minute shower per week. As a result, many frivolous aspects of grooming went straight out the window. Down with exfoliation. Forget facial masks. Pedicures? Fugeddaboutit.

Strangely enough, one of the last lingering hold-overs of the old regime, so to speak , was shaving. Leg shaving, to be precise. I remember watching my troop divide into two groups. One half leapt exuberantly from the icy spray, liberated at last from the tyranny of beauty treatments. The other half rummaged through their bags for bottles of lotion and fondly remembered razors, and perched like storks with one leg on a weathered fence-post, sullenly scraping the quill-like stubble from their bleeding calves and thighs.

Bet you can't guess which group to which I belonged.

shiny objects