Never having been, or considering myself to be a navigator, I drove in random patterns until finally locating Libby road. Buckets in hand, Shana and I triumphantly approached the shrieking girl scout gathering. Since it was windy, a swirling periphery of cups, potato-chips, and sundry items, swept about the picnic tables, accompanied by spastic lunges of those who unwisely decided to fight the elements, rather than simply enjoying the ever-shifting patterns of debris.

Splattered with wind driven gatoraid, we assembled in a long queue and trudged resolutely to the churned-up sediments on the planting site.

I was, to say the least, shocked when a gentle-seeming lady, the prairie guide-volunteer, brandished a bright orange, thin, tapered object, plunged it into the innocent soil and proceeded to whirl it in a savage, roto-rooter fashion. This device she entitled a "dibble." I don’t know what imagery seized me at that moment or whether it was latter-day dyslexia, but I began to confuse the bb’s with dd’s. In forthright circumspectness I rejected the use of this tool, tainted in my mind as it were. The bulb planter worked much better anyway. I began to excavate in manic-fashion, barely controlling myself, but hissing and buffing when the girls kicked dirt back into my precious holes.

Soon I began putting in the prairie plants, discovering that guttural grunts really help one in the final, lunging-downward, dirt-packing-process, although having a tendency to discourage the proximities of other people. As my planting-pace became more and more frenzied, I bonded with the little plants; felt their thirsty-pain, (much as our President would!) and began ululating, like Quasimodo: "waat-tur ... waat-tur ... waat-tur. "

When it was all done and we were about to leave I could not, because there was a bucket that someone had left with "High-Noon" on the side, and I had hoped to see Gary Cooper, padded-shanks, wan countenance, Colt-Peacemaker and all. Realizing that this was only fantasy I checked in with the brownie counselor, who could no longer keep a straight face in my presence.

When my daughter was given a sash, I asked if 666, rather than 757, was available as I sometimes entertain vague premonitions of the millennium and the apocalypse. When this cryptic number was denied, I again worried when the brownie troop circled, chanted, and began arcane gestures and hand-slappings. I looked around for stem-faced and mysterious personages but was reassured that Wiccan activities are not inculcated in the girl scout activities. I sighed in relief, and we left. But my dreams, for quite awhile, were fitful.

-Bob Heimerl