can i get a badge for that?

Did anyone else's parents out there describe the Girl Scouts, in their reasoning for why we would never participate, as a paramilitary organization?  I never quite got what they meant, but just chalked it up to one of those things that was just too foreign for us in its Americanness -- which is a funny, upside-down take, ain't it?  I mean, we were born here.  We watched The Brady Bunch, for cryin' out loud.  Sure, it wasn't our heritage.  But it was here.

Regardless, I would linger by the glass case at Emporium where the Brownie and Girl Scout uniforms were displayed, all the matchy bits you could buy to make up your wardrobe, and long for one.  I was in the 8th grade probably, paying down a brown flowered skirt on lay-away, and would take the streetcar down Market Street on the weekends to visit the skirt, leave some money behind, and stand there, at the uniform case, imagining what it might be like.  And even though I couldn't be one -- who knows, I might have hated it, but probably not -- even if I wasn't one, I still absorbed its ethos.  

Badges motivate the hell out of me.  If there's a certificate to be earned or a prize or a ribbon, I want in.

Part of that comes from French school to be sure, where there were prize ceremonies on an annual basis.  Somewhere we still have, my parents have, books that my father earned for scholarly merit. I have one in particular of my own somewhere at their house, a big book about Brittany inscribed with my name and the name of the prize, delivered at a night-time ceremony when I was very young.  These are sacred objects for people like us.  

But also I suppose it's an extension of my adhikara, that delightful word we use in yoga to describe studentship, which for me runs deep.  I am the person at the front of the class, front row in the studio, pencil at the ready, as close to the teacher as possible with nothing, or little, between me and the source of the wisdom I am in that room to ingest.  I want as much of the experience as possible.  

I want the A.  I want the badge.

There's nothing in it for me about self-worth, as in I need the A or the badge in order to be worthy.  As in the A makes me OK, whole, as a person.  Nope, nothing like that.  I don't need but want the A because it makes it so much more fun for me to know it all, know it deeply, passionately.  The prize, the grade, the certificate: these are just the external markers of a much more profound experience for me -- the knowing, getting bigger, expaaaanding.

I should have been an Eagle Scout.

 Even when I don't have to, I'm always studying, looking for ways to know more about the things I love. And many times the route is via certification, which is really badges for grown-ups.  I love being certified.  I did a course in 1994 (way back in the dawn of time) and became a County-certified Master Composter, ordained to teach public composting classes.  Dirt is an interesting thing to be a Master of, but still I loved it so much, learning something deeply, experimenting, getting my hands in it and sharing it, even when teaching to a group of strangers gathered around a compost bin was scary.  When we learned to dive, I was the same, especially when I realized we could move up to Advanced Open Water Divers by taking some little tests.  A badge was in sight!  And so on one live-aboard trip to the Channel Islands a few years ago, I worked on my skills, added up my points as we did the dry-suit test, the night-dive test, the navigation.  Fun!

My recent experience teaching beekeeping for Round Rock Honey School fanned a new flame for me, of becoming a certified Master Beekeeper, a whole other order of badge acquisition, since first off, I need one more year experience as a backyard beekeeper to even be considered by some of the programs offered nationally.  In the meantime, I'm working my way through a reading list I found on-line, reading the basic texts that all the programs seem to require, enjoying every line.  Going back to my notes from a lecture we attended at the Cal Academy two years ago, "Civilization on Six Legs: The Complex Societies of Ants and Honeybees," at which I heard Thomas Seeley, author of Honeybee Democracy, which I'm now devouring, in dialogue with Mark Moffett, an ant guy.  Notes that are totally crooked since they turned the lights down so low in the Planetarium where the lecture was held.

In short, I'm nerding out completely, prepping for the badge. 

And I couldn't be happier, nose deep in bee books, reading passages aloud to Joe, wishing I were doing experiments but content to be reading about them and taking them in deep to where the knowing is always growing. To where the real badge always is. ;>