From the vault...

The back of the picture proudly displays the date, written in my little kid scrawl:

March 30, 1985

That's right, you're looking at a picture of a seven-year-old Sara, posing in a College Station, Texas, Dillard's department store. That little Sara is clutching a basket (which most assuredly was "Hecho en Mexico" and contains Sara's first-born Cabbage Patch Kid, Mary).

Sara, dressed in her finest going to the mall pastel Easter colors, looks straight ahead at the camera, smiling. Surely, Sara's little face serves only to mask the raging torrent of fear coursing through her veins--fear brought on by the fact that at that moment on March 30, 1985, sweet Sara sat next to "The Scariest Easter Bunny Ever."

We can almost overlook the terrifying faceless mannequins posing behind Sara and "The Scariest Easter Bunny Ever." We almost fail to realize that those mannequins are even there, what with the masked bunny sitting right next to Sara, a furry bunny paw clutching her little shoulder, the other paw holding a pink balloon.

But, even if we cannot fathom all the creepiness of this picture, we must ask ourselves, with all the beauty of this season, why did the good people of Dillard's department store decide that this was the proper way to capture the spirit of Easter?

One of these things is different from the others...

Another year at summer camp, I decided to focus on volleyball. Quite honestly, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get into the sport that required the least amount of conditioning. I was always after the ever elusive "leather" class in which you could spend time hanging out making leather crafts like bookmarks, but to no avail. I could never get into it.

Anyways, the year I ended up in the volleyball specialty was the year that I was supposed to be doing tennis. However, rumor had it that tennis had become the toughest sport at camp. I quickly got out of that. Volleyball was no walk in the park either, though there was plenty of running through the campgrounds, tackling Cardiac Hill, and learning what would become my favorite motto--"Sacrifice your body for the good of the team." I still use that phrase to this day.

At the end of the summer, our parents came to watch what all we had learned. The wonderful people who had shelled out their money to send us to camp were treated to an afternoon of watching their (now somewhat bruised and sore) little angels yell, serve, bump, spike, and hit the ground to get a wayward ball. Remember: "Sacrifice your body for the good of the team."

The dress for the day was shorts with our matching volleyball shirts. I didn't have a volleyball shirt, so I improvised. I guess I could have worn something that, well, blended in, but we only children like to stand out from the crowd. And I sure did that.