Poor Sarah.....

She has a bit of a dilemma.  Well, for her it may very well qualify as a full blown catastrophic event, but for the rest of the world it has serious potential for quality entertainment.

Sarah, my twelve year old, wants to play softball.  On a co-ed team.

Now most of you are sitting there thinking "Yeah?  And?  What's the big whoop?"  It's like this...

Sarah is rather intellectual.  Almost annoyingly so.  She is the reason my little snipe "If you're gonna be a know-it-all know it all" is getting so much use these last few years.  She's quite a bit more advanced in reading, grammar, spelling, and some science than anyone her own age.  If she could just get around hating math (and thus, refusing to try) of any sort she'd be guaranteed a scholarship to nearly any school she might want.  When it comes to artistic creativity... well just take a look at some stuff she's done this year:

A Liger she threw together at bible camp.

A stylized cat that she was churning out by the dozens

She was working with some fancy type of crayon and playing with the colors here.

Her first day playing with drawing on a computer.

Testing out chalk pastels.

A doodle done when she was supposed to be listening to the teacher.



A quick doodle creating new "characters"



More of the new creations.

One of her first attempts at a more realistic style.



I rescued this from the trash pile.  She hates it.

One that she's actually rather fond of.

She can also turn Play-doh and sculpting clay into some of the most amazing things you'll ever see...

Her elementary school mascot.

A Mother's Day gift from a couple of years ago.  Our family turned into swans.

This is actually about two inches big at most.  She made it out of an artist's moldable eraser, when she was 10 years old.

As you can see, Sarah's totally in her element when she's sitting in one place creating or reading.  It's quite a treat to see her sit down to draw or sculpt and walk past her every 20 or 30 minutes to "ooh" and "ahh" over whatever she's dreamed up.

Softball, however, does NOT involve sitting in one place.  Now I was a very active child and teenager.  Sports and coordination came naturally to me and softball in particular was one of my favorite activities.  I'm not saying I was any kind of an all-star or anything, but I could usually avoid making a complete fool of myself on the field.  I knew I'd never be able to convey instructions from my active point of view to my child who tended to look like a deer in headlights when you told her to chew gum and walk at the same time.

So I enlisted the aid of two of the ladies on our church's league softball team.  These two sweethearts also happen to be on the city's women's league and one of them is the team's coach.  Like I said earlier, poor Sarah.

I kid you not, Shirlene tossed the first ball toward Sarah and my beautiful, intelligent, creative daughter squealed and tried her darnedest to retract every limb into her body ... at the same time. 

I honestly don't know what was more comical;

Sarah apparently believing that gravity would forgive her curling up into the fetal position while still upright
or Shirlene standing there with her mouth hanging open and obviously wondering what in the blazes she'd just gotten herself into.

This is gonna be fun. 
Bahahahahahahahahaahahahaaaaaaaa!!!