I’ve been scanning more photos, and when my 7-year-old daughter dug these out of a box buried in a closet at my parents’ house, I flipped out.
That’s me in the center, dressed as the camel. I was not quite four years old, and it was my pre-school’s Christmas pageant.
I *loved* that camel costume. I mean LOVED it. Of all the costumes my extraordinarily talented mother ever made, this one is my all-time favorite.
Mom put newspaper in the camel body to stiffen it and yardsticks in the back legs, and would you believe that when I walked those back legs would walk with me.
For real. It was awesome. I really feel that I cannot overstate the awesomeness of this camel costume.
Other kids tried to climb on the camel back. I wanted to carry them around. That didn’t work so well. I guess the costume would have been awesomer if I could have done that.
But still, seriously awesome.
Look at the Christmas joy on my little face as I sing a carol. The next year I was the Virgin Mary, and I was bummed out because I wanted to be a camel again.
I didn’t need Christmas as an excuse to break out the camel costume. I wore it at my fourth birthday party.
The little girl in the background is Heather. She was five years old, and she was the daughter of my aunt’s then-boyfriend. Heather didn’t like me. Probably her dislike was not really of me but rather of her dad dragging her to his girlfriend’s niece’s birthday party. That’s probably the reason she was mean to me.
But maybe she was just jealous because she wasn’t a camel.
