Frog Days

Once upon a time, there was me. Yeah, that’s right. I’m a gawd damned fairy tale. I’m a frog, for Christ’s sake!

“And exactly how does one become a fairy tale?” I can hear you ask yourself. Well, there are a couple of options. You can be a wolf – lots of parts for those. No shortage of witches, either. The burly types might want to take the woodsman gig. It ain’t bad – save some kids, maybe a damsel, and there might even be a hot meal in it for you. Hell, maybe more. These are the easy ways. You are who you are, and nobody denies it. Even the bad guys will tell you, “Hey, my sister is a good witch, but I’m an evil witch. And my sister ain’t here, so I’m about to do some evil shit.”

Then there’s the alternate path for the suckers. The setup for this is easy for the perp: get someone to be in the wrong place at the right time, or try to do the right thing for the wrong person. This setup has got to be the reason that nobody helps each other anymore.

So, there I was walking through Forsyth Square, looking at my feet and all the signatures on the bricks that past under them as I walked. I had just got off of work at the Garden Restaurant, hands still wrinkled from the constant dishwashing. A lady sat with her car out on Drayton Street, pointed toward the fancy downtown section. The hood was up and she was crying. People walked on by, but guess who couldn’t do that? It’s hard to pass up a distressed damsel in last year’s Mercedes. They can be good for a couple of bucks, and a couple of bucks can be good for a beer.

Trust me, you can only guess at some of the rest of this. Yeah, I stride on over there with my best John Wayne, and we look at the engine. Next thing I know, she’s misting me with this gawd-awful stuff that smelled like ripe organs and spoiled milk. I see the world growing around me – everything growing! –then I’m on the ground, fighting to get out of the heavy layers of my now useless clothes. I found out later what I had become, but at the time, I’m looking at this lady and wondering what just happened. Meanwhile, she’s going full witch on me and honest-to-Gawd cackling over me. What burnt me up is when she pulled a video camera out of a hiding place and starts hooting over her cell phone to someone about YouTube.

I tried everything at first to try to get some help but I imagine by now that my video has sponsored advertisements injected into them because it’s so popular on YouTube. My explanations didn’t get me far, short of a small collection of frog jokes. “How deep is Frog Lake? Knee-deep. Knee-deep. What do frogs do to paper? Rippit. Rippit.” Funny. Nobody is looking for me. My wife left town last June with some kid who worked at a surf shop. I haven’t spoken with my parents in three years after the Thanksgiving fight. And the Garden Restaurant can hire a new dishwasher every day if they need to. Plenty of people looking for work.

Like my grandpa always said, you got to make the best out of it, no matter how bad it is. So, I do what comes natural. As time has gone on, it has become more natural with every day. Dinner was the first change. There are no cheeseburgers on this scale. They taste awful anyway. So, I took a stab into the air and had my first taste of fly. I knew if I was going to survive, this would be my toughest obstacle. Oh, my Lord how I love flies. The housefly is head and shoulders above the rest, but gnats make a good meal, too. The variety is amazing.

The fellas and I like to get together for sing-alongs when the sun goes down. At first, I was doing it to fit in. Then, I was doing it because my friends were there. Now, it’s mostly about the ladies. I’ve never been a romantic, but there’s something special about a lady responding to your song on a moonlit night. The atmosphere changes when we’re all up in our trees, calling into the night. We all come together in a single voice – a clear chorus. It’s not just about lust. It’s about community. When you find that lady and hook up, it’s not just two, it’s all of us.

We made it through the winter, and now its spring. The big people dressed in their various colors that walk by in the park are meaningless now. The tadpoles are beautiful and growing by the day. I have my eye on a couple of them – I think they kind of take after me. I look forward to singing with them and showing them the treats that buzz around us through the night. Just the other day I had my first mosquito and have fallen in love with insect meals all over again.