Some way or another, it all begins at around 9 years old. It only takes a minor incident, a slight slip of innocence, an adjustment of the current World order as you’d previously known it, for you to realise how utterly shit everything actually is.
For me it was Brownies. For the most part - or the first year at least - Brownies was great guns. The once weekly meeting ground was an opportunity to do little else than play games, eat your body weight in free biscuits and sew badges onto a sash for everyday heroic ‘achievements’ like waving at the crazy auld woman who lives down the road from you, or sharing your lunch with the poor kid in your class who stinks like she’s slept in her own piss and turns up to school everyday with stale cornflakes stuck in her hair.
HEROIC.
We were a pretty tight little unit for a while there. There was about 30 of us in the group and being pre-pubescent weren’t yet the utterly pyschotic bitches we’d turn into in just a few years time. No-one fought. No-one picked on nobody. Everyone hung out, high fived, ate their body weight in biscuits.
There was a set roster of games. The best one was Lions And Tigers in which all the girls formed two parallel rows and sat facing each other with their feet together - each pair of girls had their own animal name and during the course of a convincingly improvised story would have to leap over the legs of the other brownie scouts in a race to see who could run around the rows first and sit back down.
It was brutal. There was always someone who would ‘accidentally’ stick their leg up at you mid-sprint. There was always a girl sobbing by the end of it with a skinned knee. Nearly always a mysterious stain of blood on the floor from where someone lost a tooth or got a nose bleed.
We learnt a lot about the brutality of the jungle from that game.
It eventually got banned.
In it’s place a new game was created. The rules of which are still hazy and tortuous to me, even now.
They involved sitting in a circle. Brown Owl - a sweet middle aged lady who was in charge of the whole team - wore a cape, and using a long stick would tap and draw imaginary symbols and shapes on the floor in front of her, walk around the perimeter of the circle tapping certain girls heads repeatedly before spanking her own hands.
This went on for a good couple of weeks before a single person even got an inkling of what the hell the game was about, and then out of nowhere my then best friend Evans yelped out STRAWBERRY! You’re spelling out STRAWBERRY!!
Everyone turned and gawped at her. The moment hung still and astonished.
Then everyone turned back to brown owl and gawped at her instead.
She was untying her cape. She motioned to my best friend to join her outside the church hall for a second and when they returned, Evans was now wearing the cape. She was now holding the stick. She became the most powerful person in the whole universe at that moment.
She sat down. She drew circles and tapped the floor in front of her. She walked around the perimeter of the circle and tapped certain girls on the head. She spanked her own palms.
No-one knew what the hell she was doing. No-one guessed for another fortnight.
Then thick as pig shit Claire Maloney bellowed CAT!! YOU’RE SPELLING OUT CAT! I GET IT!!
Then Brown Owl, Evans and thick as pig shit Claire Maloney all stood outside the church hall, and when they returned thick as pig shit Claire Maloney was wearing the cape, and holding the stick, and grinning smug as an idiot who’s just recited the two times table up to ten.
She sat her dumb arse down. Drew circles and tapped the floor in front of her. She walked around the perimeter of the circle and tapped certain girls on the head. She spanked her own palms.
Afterwards, with our free disposable cup of orange squash and pockets full of hob knobs, I broached the subject with Evans.
Tell me how it’s done, Evans.
No. I promised Brown Owl I wouldn’t tell anyone.
Please! Come on, I’m your best friend. I won’t tell anyone.
It’s not about that.
What’s it about?
Loyalty.
Lo-what?
Loyalty. Brown Owl says I’ll get a badge for loyalty if I don’t tell anyone.
You can have my badge, if you like.
You have a badge for loyalty?
No. I’ve got one for sharing my lunch with stinky, cornflake hair Cate though.
That’s not the same.
Oh. What about if I give you my share of biscuits.
No! I’m not sharing. I FIGURED OUT HOW TO PLAY THE GAME, SO SHOULD YOU! ITS EASY!
By then she’d reached her house, had started to cry, and slammed the door at me.
I took the next week off Brownies. Evans was giving me the silent treatment and the thought of spending one more week being too stupid to figure out a stupid game made me want to slap myself in the face whilst simultaneously vomiting. I was a brutal kid.
When I’d returned the next week, half the group was in on it. Apparently the week before a tonne of the girls had somehow figured out the shady inner workings of the game. They’d all donned the cape. They’d all shook the stick.
There was 12 of us left now. The nightmarish suggestion that we might be singled out by our stupidity, abandoned by it, rejected for it - the suggestion that one of us may never figure this out, may never be part of THEM - hung devilishly over our heads.
This was the first threat of failure. This is what they teach you in Brownies.
The group, becoming segregated in the two packs of those who had guessed the method of the game and those that hadn’t, became more and more blatant. Those that hadn’t spent their time nervously sweating and watching, with longing, the girls whose brains had not decided to abandon them. Those that had, high fived and patted backs. Wecome To The Club!
Brown Owl stood with that group. She didn’t stand with ours.
One by one our group grew smaller and smaller. I begged Evans with growing desperation to tell me what the rules were, what it all meant. I bartered with biscuits, chocolates, clothes, cd’s, tapes, toys. I grabbed onto her jacket as she walked away. I sobbed.
People don’t need all your material shit. They don’t need to be begged. The more you beg and plead, the more you prove that you need something from them. To have something that people need and can’t have is the most valuable thing in the whole fucking World. What an age to learn it.
I asked one of the most recent joiners of the other group to share her secret with me.
There was a pact! I screeched, distressed, We all made a pact to remember the group you’d left! To tell us how to play the game. PLEASE TELL US!
No.
No?
No.
Why?
Promised Brown O--
I don’t care if you promised her.
That’s not very nice.
I know. Well - tell me how you worked it out.
I didn’t.
You didn’t?
No. Brown Owl told me.
BROWN OWL TOLD YOU?!!
Yeah.
Thanks.
It was all so clear to me now. Brown Owl. This was all a mass conspiracy! This was all a way to torture and bully! It was all so elaborate! The whole game was probably fake!
EUREKA! That’s it! The game isn’t real!
Evans was tapping out something onto the floor.
CLOUDS!! I shrieked YOU’RE SPELLING OUT CLOUDS!!
There were only three of us left now who hadn’t worn the cape or tapped the stick. It was time to break out.
The other group looked at other. Thick as pig shit Claire Maloney started laughing.
Brown Owl shook her head.
I’m afraid it isn’t. Everyone - what word are we spelling out?
CHOCOLATE - everyone chanted, smugly.
Why? Why is it?! How?
That’s something you need to work out.
Me? It’s impossible. This is a stupid game. Stupid.
I stood up and walked to sit over on the stage at the front of the church hall. I heard some of the girls laugh at me. They wanted me to cry, but I would not cry.
Oh well, why don’t we carry on playing anyway, shall we girls?
The girls all cheered. I could hear the stick tapping. I could feel them watching me.
Another one of the final girls shouted out FLOWER?! She got it correct. Then there was only me and another girl left.
My cheekbones hurt. My eyes felt strained. My head hurt.
SUNSHINE? said the final girl. Everyone applauded. I was alone.
Can you tell me how to play the game, now? I asked. Defeated. Done.
They ignored me.
Everyone got biscuits. Disposable cups full of squash.
The next week Lions And Tigers got put back on the playtime roster and I totally killed on the nose bleed and skinned knee front.
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