FRESH YARN presents: Making Do... by Anne Flanagan

FRESH YARN presents:

Making Do
By Anne Flanagan

As a child, I was not allowed to join the Brownies. My father, a young university professor, ex-Marine-turned-pacifist, took one look at the uniforms and deemed them "Fascist."

Dad (and therefore my mother as well) also decreed the Barbie doll "sexist" so my sister and I were denied the sleek, buxom beauties; forced, instead, to make do with the "Sunshine Family" -- an interracial, multi-generational collection of dolls whose females had politically correct flat chests and zero fashion sense. Also off limits were comic books, commercial television, and Oreos, all categorized as "trash."

I was able to satisfy my Barbie doll craving at a friend's house, the comic book and television ban didn't bother me too much, but the inability to don that brown beanie really hurt and I was vigilant in protest until finally my parents relented. Sort of. Instead of the Brownies, I was permitted to join 4-H.

Like the Brownies, and their older counterpart, the Girl Scouts of America, 4-H is a national organization that sponsors various youth-centered activities, but it lacked the slick, media savvy flash of the GSA. I wanted uniforms, merit badges, and sleep away camp. Instead, I got a lousy 4-H patch featuring a green, four-leaf clover, each leaf representing a different "H" (hand, heart, health…hymen?), and a membership to 4-H Chapter Number X with a focus on…animal husbandry.

It seems that in Delaware, Ohio, the small town where I grew up, the local 4-H Chapter catered to the outlying rural areas of Delaware County whereas the Delaware City girls were all members of that urbane, hip, cookie-selling inner circle I was barred from entering.

I begrudgingly attended my first 4-H meeting, held in the den of "Kim" Somebody's house -- a nightmare of calico and needlepoint pillows -- where I learned that I was the only one who didn't live on a farm, who didn't know how to sew, and who didn't own a pet that weighed over 100 pounds. This last distinction became an important one as I was told that the focus of this group, indeed its very raison d'etre, was to prepare for the Youth Division of the "Livestock Competition" at the annual County Fair. Along with pumpkins resembling Abe Lincoln, and 18-foot sunflowers, my 4-H compatriots would be displaying their husbandry skills by showcasing award-winning Palomino ponies, Yorkshire swine and Holstein cows.

I did not own livestock. I did, however, own a guinea pig.

I acquired my first guinea pig when I was seven years old. I ingeniously named it "Blackie" because it was -- brace yourself -- black. Blackie lasted all of about seven days, falling prey to some mysterious disease that seemed the fate of many an animal coming from the "Fish and Feathers" pet store on Sandusky Street. Blackie did not exactly up and die, but lingered on in a Terri Schiavo-like state until my Father decided to put it out of its misery. Rather than squander money at the vet, Dad figured we could just as well DIY it, and he enlisted the help of our neighbor, Godfrey, a visiting biologist from Guyana. Dad had gouged a hole in one end of a shoebox, which now contained the comatose guinea pig. I sat on the front porch, eating applesauce, and watched as Godfrey gamely held the shoebox to the exhaust pipe of our bright orange Volkswagen Camper while Dad repeatedly revved the engine. Periodically, Godfrey would peer beneath the lid of the shoebox and then call in his lilting accent "Not yet!," and Dad would give the engine another go. Finally, Godfrey pronounced Blackie dead and we buried him in our back yard, marking the grave with an ersatz Indian arrowhead from Cedar Point Amusement Park.

My next guinea pig, Queenie, lived to the ripe old age of six. However, she was marginalized by the fact that her hind legs were paralyzed. When I bought her as Blackie's replacement, the pet store owner told me to feed her "pellets" (manufactured food which I also purchased) but neglected to tell me that the diet should be supplemented with fresh greens. So Queenie got rodent rickets, or scurvy, or a similar malady, which froze her hind legs. She could still drag herself around by her front legs, and she could move pretty fast too, but I opted not to "show" her as I felt the paralyzed hindquarters might prove a disadvantage.

For my 4-H competitive project, I decided to show Hector, AKA "Rainbow", a male guinea pig with a reddish coat, "russets" (swirley hair rather than smooth), and the ability to leap over a chopstick placed between the bars in his cage. My booth, sandwiched between a dolorous-eyed cow and a gleaming auburn horse, contained a lone card table upon which I placed Rainbow in his metal cage. I tried to dress up the surroundings with hand made posters sporting magic-marker headings like "Fun Facts about Guinea Pigs," and "Rainbow through the Ages" (upon which I pasted photos of Rainbow as a baby and so forth -- each photo looking pretty much identical to the one preceding it). Still I had to admit the overall effect of my booth, dwarfed as it was by hulking, pedigreed neighbors, was fairly unimpressive.

I thought briefly of replacing Rainbow with our family's Standard Poodle, "Pansy." (I was only four years old when I christened her for the flower, which her dark brown coat resembled. I would for the next 20 years be reduced to screeching the disclaimer "I DIDN'T KNOW 'PANSY' MEANT GAY!") The problem was, Pansy was epileptic and, despite medication, would occasionally have a seizure, or "fits" as we called them. Her body would freeze, every muscle taut, and her eyes seemed to double in size, rolling back as she would topple over and begin to shake violently. The protocol we followed was to grab the nearest bean bag chair (this being the '70s, we had a lot of them), throw it on top of her, and then sit on top of the bean bag and stroke her head, thus comforting her and keeping her from thrashing around and hurting herself. I became so used to this, I'd forget to clue in a visitor why, seemingly out of the blue, I was suddenly possessed with the need to crush my dog with tacky furniture.

Despite the notoriety an epileptic poodle may have brought (I even entertained the idea of triggering a fit, then passing it off as a "Hypnotic Trance!!" -- "See the Amazing Pansy foam at the mouth!!"), I decided this Freak Show approach was beneath Pansy's dignity, and the excitement of the County Fair would be too stressful for her.

Rainbow, my placid, celery-chomping guinea pig, did not win any ribbons (this was before "self-esteem" became a buzzword and every child got an award simply for breathing), my exhibit closed without fanfare, and Rainbow returned to obscurity. This saddened me -- primarily for Rainbow's sake. Not only was he a perfectly good pet, he was something of a lifesaver, providing soft comfort and stability in a chaotic, unpredictable household. But how could I have conveyed that to the masses?

Shortly after the County Fair, I hung up my four-leaf clover as my father finally relented, and I was finally allowed to join the Girl Scouts!

I lasted six months.

Once the allure of the uniform's jaunty cap and Beauty Queen-ish sash wore off, I began to chafe under the copious rules and "Goody Two Shoe" expectations of the GSA. As lame as 4-H had been, at least Kim Somebody's mom was pretty hands-off whereas my Girl Scout Troup Leader micro-managed every project, having no appreciation for creativity or "out of the box" thinking. This was a woman who never colored outside the lines, and I lost all initiative under her invasive, perfectly manicured thumb. I started to falsify records so that I could earn merit badges at a competitive rate, I coerced a fellow Scout to make me a Cliff Notes version of the tedious manual, and I often faked illness in order to avoid the boring nature hikes and rainy camp-outs. Most disheartening, I found that I hated selling Girl Scout cookies to strangers as it felt a lot like begging. Instead, I bought the whole bunch myself, with my meager allowance, and then resold them to my visiting relatives at Christmas.

I waited until after the much anticipated Roller Skate! Night (even a militant troop leader couldn't suck the fun out of that -- with my new Farrah hair style and a glass tube of Bonnie Belle Strawberry Lip Potion dangling from my neck, I was "Doin' the Locomotion" with the best of 'em!), and then I formally withdrew from the Girl Scouts of America.

My uniform became a costume used to portray miscellaneous Army personnel in the Super 8 films my friend Steven produced (always starring the one kid in the neighborhood with a BB gun because, well -- he had the BB gun), and I had enough cookies to provide craft services for an eternity.

Around that same time, a neighbor lady cleared out her attic. As a result, my sister and I inherited a bunch of Barbie dolls and a stack of "Archie and Betty" comic books. The novelty of owning these vacant, blue-eyed Babes and their pink, plastic paraphernalia wore off fairly quickly, as did the fascination with the dimwitted Archie bunch. The booty was eventually donated to the Salvation Army along with my father's Nehru jacket, my mother's hand-knitted ponchos, and the politically correct "Sunshine Family", by now stripped of their heads and limbs, more closely resembling the truncated, disjointed family we were soon to become.