Juvenilia: “They Felt Like Clapping Hands & Jumping Up & Down”

My First Published Byline

Apparently, this was my first published byline, which appeared in the Enosburg Standard somewhere around 1967-68. I’m the dejected chubby girl in full Girl Scout regalia in the back row.

Worth Preserving?

I’ve often wondered as I consider cleaning out an overstuffed closet whether one’s juvenilia is an important enough record of a writer’s development to preserve. In my own case, common sense would say no, of course not, don’t be silly.

Yet, I refuse to part with any of it, even though these painfully immature little poems and stories tucked into the folders and boxes that clutter my daily existence are of absolutely no use to me and certainly of no use to posterity.

Regardless, this little article from the Enosburg Standard is worth preserving because it tells me how much I was loved as a child, even a chubby and dejected prepubescent child. My mother had clipped the article and mailed it to my grandmother Velma, who saved it with her papers, leaving it behind when she died in 1975. “They Felt Like Clapping Hands & Jumping Up & Down” came full circle back to me in 2016, when as the eldest of the current generation, I became the keeper of The Family Archives.

In Case Anyone Is Interested . . .

On December 6th Girl Scout Troop 185 had their candlelight ceremony to get their pins.

The middle trefoil was lit by three patrol leaders and the other ten candles were lit by the other patrol leader and nine other girls who did not receive pins.

The fourth graders who received pins were: Cindy Carpenter, Lisa Robtoy, Cathy Myott, Kathy Hayes, Patty McDermott, Nancy Green, Linda Fortin, and Cindy Deming.

The fifth and sixth graders were Marlene Hemond and Nancy Laflam.

The four patrol leaders, Debby Patch, Ardell Beaulieu, Colleen Colburn, Cindy Broe, received their leaders cords.

Two girls received badges. Liz Gauffreau earned the collector and Colleen Colburn earned the housekeeper.

On Nov. 15th and 22nd, Mrs. Amlaw taught the troop square dancing.

The girls have taken up as a service project, collecting books for the men in Vietnam.