Growing up in a small town, we didn’t have many options for after-school activities, but my mom knew the importance of being involved. So, she enrolled me and my sister Kirby in one of the few available offerings—gymnastics.

I was a clumsy, uncoordinated kid. After years and years of practice, my cartwheel was still crooked, the uneven bars were scarily high and I somehow managed to face plant into the vault. I was truly terrible and the accumulating “participation” ribbons from gymnastics meets were only confirming it.

Like most kids, I wanted to belong. Gymnastics made me feel like an outsider and other sports were out of the question for this accident-prone child. One day, I noticed a group of Girl Scouts meeting in the cafeteria after school. It looked like fun, and I wanted to join. The only problem—all of the troops in town were full.

My supermom bravely volunteered to start a troop (thanks, Mom!). She worked full-time and then some as a speech pathologist. She was raising two kids on her own, and now she had a troop of elementary school-age girls to haul around town in her minivan (which we called The Rocket). Suddenly, I belonged to a group filled with my best friends and led by the woman I admired most in the world.

Our Girl Scout troop voted against wearing uniforms, but prided ourselves on collecting more patches and earning badges for our green sashes. We were proud of being girls and likened ourselves to a less ritzy “Troop Beverly Hills,” from the 1989 comedy starring Shelley Long. In fact, to earn one of our patches, my mother set up a meeting with the manager of our favorite tween clothing store at the mall and we put on a fashion show in the living room.

We never camped, either, though we did get our hands dirty. We visited a local stable and learned how to care for horses, and we went horseback riding in the Ozarks. We toured the caves at Blanchard Springs. We picked up litter at Lake Catherine State Park. We hosted a Halloween party for our classmates and told scary stories around a bonfire. We slept in sleeping bags during lock-ins at the YMCA and did the mashed potato at father-daughter dances in the school gym.

And then there were the cookies. Oh, the cookies. Of course, my sister and I got orders from my mother’s coworkers. But we were competitive cookie peddlers, so we didn’t stop there. With my mom following us in the car, we would walk our large neighborhood and knock on every door. When the cookies arrived, we sorted them in towering stacks around our house and delivered them to the neighbors in our little red wagon.

We had good reason to be motivated cookie sellers. Every year, our troop would take our earnings and plan a trip—to Branson, Mountain View or Memphis. We learned about the world around us through Girl Scouts and then we went out and explored it…together.