Don’t Cry, Laugh

For the past five years in Girl Scouts, my troop has gone to an event, in Rhode Island, called T.R.E.C. (Teens Reaching Extraordinary Challenges), where we compete in different events against other girls from New England. It has become a sort of joke each year that almost everyone has to cry at least once, whether it is from losing a competition, someone slightly injuring themselves, or dropping clothes in the toilet.

One year, our leader had just replaced the blade on the saw but, as we soon found out, it wasn’t tightened properly. It wasn’t dangerous, the blade didn’t fall off or anything, but the blade bent back and forth easily. For the sawing event, there is a small log, probably a little bigger than my wrist, that has been set up on saw horses. Another girl in my troop and I were the two competing for the sawing event. I went first, holding the saw on the log waiting for the judges to start the timer, while she sat on the log to hold it steady. I started sawing as fast as I could, but the saw kept getting stuck and slowing me down. I was starting to get nervous because every time I had practiced I hadn’t struggled this much, and the girls from other troops didn’t seem to have any problems. Was I doing something wrong? The two women watching over the event said that it looked like the saw wasn’t tightened all the way, but I had to keep going. I finally got through in about 45 seconds, in the past, it usually took me 20 seconds at the most. The other girl got up and I handed her the saw and then I took her place on the log, holding it in place. I watched her as she struggled with the saw, she had to keep stopping and putting it back in place. She got about halfway through the log when she was stopped at the 1-minute mark. I was annoyed because I knew that we couldn’t win this event, which is one I was very confident in, but there wasn’t anything we could do about it now so I tried to focus on the next event, knot tying. The other girl, however, was so stressed that she started crying.

She is definitely not the only person to ever cry at T.R.E.C., almost everyone has. Another girl, who did the tripod lashing event for three years in a row, pinched her fingers and got blood on the poles the first year, she cried after that. I have only cried on one of the trips when I dropped my legging in the toilet while I was trying to get dressed in the bathroom, at least they were flushies, not outhouses like some camps have. Someone else burnt their hands in hot dishwater, she said she didn’t feel it because her hands were numb from the cold and I don’t think she cried, but her hands were red and everyone else was really concerned. All of these things can be really upsetting or scary at the time, but looking back now we can all laugh. We still go back the next year and learn from the past, we remember to tighten the saw, we watch out for fingers during tripod lashing, we get dressed in the tent instead of the bathroom (it is a serious skill to be able to put pants on in a sleeping bag), and we don’t let certain people do the dishes. We continue to joke about the past years. I know that if we weren’t able to laugh about all of these things, the first year we went to T.R.E.C would have been our last.