One of the Fiats, the Green one!

Earlier this afternoon, for some reason I told my husband about getting thrown out of the Girl Scouts. Realise we have been together for almost 25 years and he had never heard this story.

I call myself a recovering Southern Belle, this is probably a contributing factor.; as Belles are naturally former Girl Scouts. Girl Scouts are an American organization that hike, camp, earn badges and improve neighborhoods, according to their website. I imagine their goals were similar in the late 1960’s when I was dying to be a Girl Scout, have a green uniform and belong.

My mother, the venerable Miss Betty, I think was approaching her limit on driving children around (I was the fourth) and she had not learned to drive until the ripe old age of 35. Then, my father insisted that only a manual transmission car was worthwhile and bought her a series of peculiar Fiats. The suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia was not the place for any sort of foreign car in the 1960’s.

We lived in a relatively unfashionable area that still had Ku Klux Klan meetings, I can remember a building downtown with a giant cross on top where the meetings were held. And  I attended Elementary school with the Grand Wizards grandson. For some reason I turned out to be a mostly socially liberal person with numerous gay friends, go figure.

One day Miss Betty was selected to drive the Girl Scout troop around. Well, the Fiat had a stick shift and no one in the sticks of North Georgia had ever been in anything other than a Buick with a sluggish automatic transmission. The phone tree in suburban Atlanta lit up with concern about the maniac lady in the Red Fiat. Mothers were complaining that their daughters were terrified by the stick shift and the speed of the little Fiat that had an engine about the size of a really fast John Deere lawnmower.

My mother was appalled at the indignity of being accused of speeding and terrifying little girls and pulled me out of Girl Scouts immediately. I have never joined another women only organization.