Dirty Brown Owl

I have no idea why I’m not in my uniform here. I blame my mother. Also, I’m the tallest one in the back.

There really wasn’t anything I didn’t love about Brownie Scouts. I loved going to Sears with my mom to buy my uniform, I loved wearing my uniform to school, I just loved that fucking uniform. It was the one thing I could wear that didn’t make me feel like the Jolly Green Giant and miles above the other girls in my class. I could just be a normal first grade girl in that uniform.

Our Scout meetings were at a woman’s house who home schooled her children, which I also thought was fantastic. They had chemistry and art stations and loads and loads of books that I coveted. Their son even had a crush on me, the only boy in the world who did.

My mother would often drop me off early – probably so she could go shopping or do something for herself – so more often than not, I wound up setting up the day’s activity with the scout leaders.

One dreary afternoon we were going to be making paper puppets. Their arms and legs were held together with metal clasps and you had to assemble a string between their legs to make their arms and legs flap out and in.

The scout leaders arranged them all out on the activity table: a dog, a cat, a bunny rabbit, a princess, a ballerina, and a brown owl.

“Oh geez,” said the main leader, “no one is going to want to pick that dirty brown owl.”

And she was right. It was just a boring brown owl. It didn’t have any of the beauty of the ballerina or princess and certainly none of the cuteness of the bunny and kitty cat. It was a dirty, dirty brown owl.

In the blink of an eye, I saw the selection scenario play out: Heather Mueller would get the ballerina because it was the best and she was the prettiest and most popular. There would be haggling amongst the lesser girls for every other puppet, except for the owl.

I knew I wouldn’t fare well in that fight. I also knew I didn’t even want to fight that fight. I didn’t want the owl, but I turned to the scout mothers and said, “I’ll take the owl.”

They cooed over me and told me how grateful they were and what a grown up decision I had made. I let their compliments about my supposed maturity fill up the hole inside me that knew I would never get the things I really wanted because I wasn’t pretty enough, smart enough, or worthy enough of them.

When the other girls got to the house, the selection went down pretty much the way I thought it would with fucking Heather lording her perfect blonde feather winged hair and her ballerina over us and, of course, making a comment about my “doo doo owl.” I threw it away as soon as I got home.

Many years later, after a particularly awful break up with someone I realized I really didn’t even like that much anyway, I said out lout to no one in particular, “I’m so fucking tired of settling for the dirty fucking brown owl.” That choice and everything that it implied had stayed with me throughout adulthood. But I was an adult now and I was tired of being the responsible one. Tired of making the choice that was best for everyone. Sometimes a girl needs a ballerina and to hell with what anyone else wants for needs. Let someone else have the dirty brown owl.