I'm starting my own Mom's variation of Cubs/Scouts/Brownies - Beginner Level

I'm starting my own Mom's variation of Cubs/Scouts/Brownies - Beginner Level
28 January 2016

I’ve decided I’m going to take a page out of old Baden Powell’s book.  Look if he can start a “secret” society, so can I.

Just think of the fun.  I’ll do a special handshake.  And make a salute of sorts.  Possibly a uniform (though it won’t be brown).  And definitely, absolutely, without a doubt, huge, humongous, gigantic, enormous emphasis will be placed on the gaining of badges.  In true Cubs/Scouts/Brownies tradition.  Please note these will be simple glue-on badges.  No ironing or sewing involved.

But here’s the deal.  My society will be exclusive.  A Mom’s-Only kind of thing.  No dads.  No husbands.  No boyfriends.  And never, ever, ever any kids.  They can’t even come to our meetings.  My society, my rules – KIDS ARE BANNED!

Here will be our pledge.  One we shall recite at every single meeting:

We, the moms, will unite.  We shall strive for a just universe, where dad’s do equal duties and chores.  We all live with one goal in sight – a day we will have a warm meal, at the same time as the rest of our families.  An uninterrupted meal.  We will one day be able to wear white clothes again.  We will lay claim to bathroom privacy.  Handbags and their contents will be the domain of mothers only.  We will not drive around unnecessarily for teenagers.  We will make decisions, best suited to our needs.  We will not stop, until our goals are realised.

But badges, are actually where it’s all at.  Because let’s keep it real.  The chances of us moms actually being able to coordinate our schedules, in between our running around after our kids, to ever have a meeting at all, are rather slim.  So we’re left with badges.  Which in itself is not really a bad thing.  Cause we all like ourselves a bit of recognition, right?  So as for the badges, here are the requirements:

• Change Badge – this badge is one of the easiest accomplishments and most moms of school going children, complete this badge first.  It requires exact change given to at least 2 offspring, 1 minute before getting out of the car at school.  Mostly because the request for change is only given, 1 minute before getting out of the car at school.  It is fair to mention that the change requirements must include coins and notes, and have to be placed in an envelope or money bag.  Odd amounts are encouraged – like R26 and R17. 
• Barf Badge – the badge will only be awarded, after a minimum of 5 vomit-on-mother-experiences.  If vomit is in the hair of the mother, then the minimum requirement drops down to 4.  If the vomit is in the hair of the mother, whilst driving a car, and it gets on the upholstery and in the gear lever mechanism, the minimum requirement drops down to 3.  If the vomit happens in a public place, like a shop for example, on a busy Saturday morning, the minimum requirement drops down to 2.  I would like to point out at this juncture that Pep Stores in Gansbaai will never be the same again.  One of my kids did violent chunks in Pep.  I still shudder at the memory.  As does the kind cleaning lady who helped us, I’m sure.  And lastly, if the vomit experience happens late at night on a friend’s Queen sized bed, after said friend has kindly offered her bed, with her nicest duvet, for your kid to have a little kip on, you graduate to an immediate Barf Badge – gold embossed.  Especially if the last thing your kid ate was Nik-Naks.  Enough said.  Sorry Thea.
• Bean Badge – this badge is awarded to mothers who have lovingly watered and nurtured their children’s science bean-growing experiment.  Numerous times.  This badge goes to the mother who buys a selection of mixed beans with every cycle of bean-growing experiments.  Said mother has an enviable selection of packets of beans, all missing about 5 beans only, from butter beans, to speckled, and red kidney beans too. 
• School Project Badge – this badge is given to those mothers, who can miraculously, whip up a school oral on the lesser spotted toad (amongst others), in 5 minutes flat.  Complete with pictures.  Though they might be grainy and very pixelated, and the yellow ink’s run dry, so the frog is looking decidedly purple and unwell.  The very same mother, might even be clever enough to save every single oral ever done, so that subsequent children can recite the same drivel, in subsequent years.  In extreme cases, this mother can be counted on to con her 7 year old son that Goldilocks is a very masculine oral, and that he should definitely go with it.  Cause she has the pictures already.  Though it can be said that Goldilocks is looking a bit green around the gills (red ink ran out).
• Sewing Badge – the sewing badge is given out to the rarest of mothers – those with emergency sewing skills.  Like stapling a school hem in, minutes before depositing said kid into the car before doing the morning school run.  Safety pins and paperclips are also essentially haberdashery tools for this mom.
• IOU Badge – this is also an easily attainable badge.  It requires that the mother borrows money from her offspring.  Usually birthday money.  The trick is to give the money back before the next birthday.  Offspring are known to charge exorbitant interest rates.  In a best case scenario, these are emergency loans only.  Sort of quickly-nip-to-the-corner-café for a loaf of bread, and rather pay cash than swipe a bank card for R11,50.  The banking charges are ridiculous.  But then again, to be fair, so are the extortion-like interest rates from the kids…  I’m good for it.  I swear!  They know where I live.
• Shoelace Badge – this mother is presented with a shoe lace crises.  On a regular basis.  Who knows how they fray so easily?  The mother then takes to randomly chucking shoes out of any person in the home’s cupboard, in order to make a quick-fix plan.  The mother never actually remembers to buy replacements.  So a large majority of shoes belonging to any one person, is lace-less.  However if she does get replacements, the laces are long enough to lace up Big-Foot’s shoes, if he ever wore any.  Or short enough for the Tooth Mouse.  If he wore any too.  In hindsight the mother is overly fond of velcro shoes.  Or sandals.  And essentially the benefit of walking around barefoot is not to be underestimated.  It is very healthy and can be seen as medicinal as it enforces the child to get in touch with mother earth, in an extremely tactile manner.
• Doctor Badge – this badge is given to that mom who has a deathly sick child.  In the interest of the health of her child, this mom takes her child to the doctor, and on occasion even to the ER.  However these children are known to undergo a remarkable, nay miraculous recovery, upon crossing the threshold of the doctor.  They become chipper and active.  Pale no more.  Coughing abates and fevers subside.  Lethargy vanishes, and they are 100% happy and healthy.  Until you embarrassingly leave the doctor.  Minus any meds.  And you cross the threshold of your own home.  And said child coughs up a lung.  And runs a fever of 42.  Occasionally, they even pull out the big guns.  And projectile vomits.  In your hair.  Please read subsection 2 above.  This mother also immediately qualifies for the Barf Badge.  Gold embossed.
• Bowel Badge – this badge is often a prelude to the Doctor Badge above.  Any indication from a child that they are unwell, is treated with the same response from the mother, “Have you tried making a poo yet?” This response is given irrespective of the actual ailment.  Albeit a sore tummy, a headache, growing pains, a splinter, feeling dizzy, etc.  The Bowel Badge is the mother’s first port of call for all illnesses.  Only once you have exhausted the Bowel response, a suitable period of time has lapsed, and you’ve dipped into your home medicine kit, or you really fear for your child’s health, does the mother actually resort to taking her child to the Doctor.  Read point above, namely the perils of the Doctor Badge.  Because this is a tricky one.  Be very, very sure, before you risk humiliation.  One you’ll be charged for by your friendly health care provider.  At above medical aid tariffs.
• Leftover Badge – this badge is awarded to mothers who can miraculously con her family into eating leftovers, with a few minor adjustments.  A tweak here and there usually does the trick.  Personally I can highly recommend the addition of cheese.  Or a sauce.  Or even better, a cheese sauce.
• Bedtime Badge – this badge is given to the very wily-est of mothers.  The ones who have turned forward the clocks in her house and have told her kids that it’s bedtime already.  Hey, it’s survival of the fittest some times.  It’s me or them…And if I’m not here, who’s going to staple up their hems?  Or write their orals. 
• Homework Badge – also an easily attainable badge.  I find these very easy to accomplish at the beginning of the school year or new term.  When kids have to make a cover page for all of their subjects.  All 11 subjects.  I have coloured in my fair share of world maps… Homework Badge moms are also dab hands at scouring old magazines for pictures their kids should be finding.  Of healthy food.  And dairy products.  And domestic animals.  And anything that starts with Lucy Lamplady.  The benefit of moms helping and pretending that they’re their kids, is that neatness goes out of the window.  Look, when you’re pretending to be 8, you can’t colour in perfectly between the lines now can you?  And scissor cutting skills take years to accomplish.  Homework Badge moms are also known for cutting certain essential corners.  Like bypassing the whole magazine route entirely.  And just printing the necessary pictures off the internet.  However the blue ink running out and all of your deciduous tree pictures, looking a bit red is just one of those things.  Like it or lump it.
• Lunchbox Badge – now it can be said that most moms do strive to pack a nice lunch box.  But there is the odd occasion, it just doesn’t happen.  When the snacky-treat portion of the lunchbox is 7 sad peanuts at the bottom of the packet.  And the fruit is in fact, not a fruit at all, but a hastily peeled carrot.  The trick with this, is the ensure that the lunch box is popped into their school bag in the morning, before they have a chance to peep.  Because if they spot the contents of said sad lunch box before you’ve even left home, you’re going to get an earful.  I prefer to think upon these occasionally sad lunch box days, as a surprise “treat”.  Best reserved for a grand reveal at school, during break time.  When you’re not within ear shot.  Cause here’s the thing – usually they forget about it by the time they get home.  And just think – it’s actually an exercise in delayed gratification.  Because the next day’s average-by-regular-standards lunchbox, will be stellar by comparison.
• Music Tolerance Badge – this badge can be earned with kids of all ages.  This badge is mainly applicable on car journeys.  Hence a confined space.  With no escape possible.  With small kids, the tolerance to repetitive renditions of “The wheels on the bus”, is tested amongst others.  As well as other “uplifting” and never ending little ditties, like “10 green bottles”.  After a while, one graduates up to “delightful” and charming children CD choices, like Crazy Frog.  I have no words.  Yet now, I long for those days.  From personal experience with my 3, all car journeys are an auditory nightmare.  From Hip-Hop and R&B, to hectic Rap, Dubstep, Trance, etc.  And yip, no one can agree on the same choice of music.  I’ve resorted to rewarding myself on the hour and half hour with requests to urgently listen to the news.  Something I have no real interest in at all.  It is a much needed reprieve from doef-doef-doef at times.
• Countless Counting Badge – the recipient of this badge has spent countless hours of her life, counting senseless achievements.  This mother can never regain this stolen time again.  It is forever gone.  Counting includes random “achievements” like, “Please count how long I can do a handstand”, and other treasures like, “Please count how long I can hold my breath under water”, amidst other senseless accomplishments.  Like laps swam in a pool, amount of underpants worn together, amount of hair ponies worn at one time.
• I-Can’t-Find-It Badge – this is a very well deserved badge.  Given to mothers of blind children.  Although said children have 20/20 vision.  It is not so much a lack of seeing, as it is a lack of energy to look.  And look actively.  These children are not capable of moving anything in their search for something they’ve lost.  Zip.  Nada.  Nothing.  Rulers are always at the bottom of school bags, because they didn’t look deep enough.  Pencils are hiding underneath books.  The sandals or shoes are where they always are.  In the cupboard.  Imagine that!
• Finish It or Pincher Badge – this badge is also an easily attainable badge.  It is given to any mother who has stubbornly been unable to resist temptation.  Despite knowing the obvious pitfalls.  The mother who has finished the last 3 bacon kips left over in the school lunch box.  Who sneaks sweets out of the kids’ sweets packet.  Who pops a few nuts into her gob before packing the rest in the snack box.  Who pinches 4 fries from the McDonalds Happy Meal.  Who steals…
• Laundry Badge – this is an arduous badge to complete.  It demands sorting through the laundry basket.  Kids have an inherent inability to differentiate between dirty laundry, laundry that needs ironing, and laundry they just don’t feel like packing away.  Daughters are particularly deft at this.  Especially whilst getting ready for a big event, like a school dance.  Numerous outfit changes are tried on and paraded in front of the mirror.  Piles of clothes heap up in the fray.  Anything, not deemed suitable to wear to the specific event, is relegated to the laundry basket.  Where the mother has the great joy or sorting out the piles.  Into dirty, needing an iron, and just needing to be packed away.
• Lego Badge – this badge is given to any mother who has risked mortal injury, by stepping on a block of Lego.  Barefoot.  In the dark.  Whilst carrying something fragile.  Please note that though this badge is predominantly awarded for Lego-based-foot-injuries-taking-weeks-to-heal, it is not exclusive to Lego blocks alone.  Barbie’s shoes are equally effective.  And damaging.  Skinny cow.
• De-tangler Badge – all De-tangler Badges are golden.  And embossed.  With gold filigree.  They are also slightly larger than other badges.  Because they’re more special.  This entails brushing out a rat’s tail of hair.  Particularly at the end of a school holiday, after loads of swimming and sticky sunblock residue has gathered on said rat’s tail.  De-tangler Badges are best accomplished with the benefit of ear muffs.  Alternatively, the use of earphones, pumping out loud reggae music is recommended.  Only those mothers with the very strongest resolves and extreme measures of self-restraint, are able to withstand the temptation of occasionally wacking the rat’s tail recipient with a brush.  Apparently this is possible, but no reported sightings of this achievement have been recorded.  However, I’m not saying it’s impossible per se.  Just highly improbable.
• Why Badge – the Why Badge is one of the most trying badges to get.  Why?  It’s not that it’s difficult.  It’s just that it’s annoying.  Why?  Because you hear the question, “Why”, so often.  Why?  Well, who can tell really.  Why?  Because I bloody said so!
• Senseless Information Badge – in similar vein to the Why Badge, the Senseless Information Badge is also a trying accomplishment.  It entails being bombarded, constantly, with senseless, unnecessary information.  Like, “Did you know that Rottweilers are stronger than Maltese Poodles”, and “If you lick someone’s elbow they can’t feel it”, as well as “Sia (random singer) never shows her face in public”.  All information you are none the poorer for.  Having never heard it ever.  In your life.  A never ending barrage of things you could quite happily have spent your entire life not knowing, and not caring about.  Even worse, you can’t simply ignore the information.  Dialogue is encouraged, so you have to temporarily at least, store the drivel.  Personally, I see it as an exercise in short term memory recall.

Tomorrow I shall expand on the badge requirements for Level 2 - Intermediate...  For now, I suggest you stew on the options available to you above, and make a list of those badges you would like to qualify for first.

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