A froggish feeling
Tears of brine escaped my eyes and fell to my hands, washing away the dirt that began to cover this grave. Oh, how bitter the soil would become! All over a poor little frog! If my mother witnessed me now, I would find myself a spot next to the poor animal that died by her hand.
The frog that I once held was no larger than my jacket buttons. His golden browns were almost camouflaged on my outstretched hand. Even its eyes were the same hues, only more glossy, arching in their radial pattern. His skin was as bumpy as the winter roads of York after the snowplows have laid gritty salt, the brown pigment darker over the peaks. I brought him home, I named him Ed, and I fed him fruit flies. A wave of nostalgia came over me every time I examined the little guy, bringing moments of my childhood that I scarily remembered. I reminisced those moments where I would poke around the creek, mind muddier than the shallow waters, noticing all the little frogs. All of their eyes were just as pretty as slime-dipped marbles, but now I was entranced all the same. The fascination was so potent; it shamed my degree in political science from the University of York. The one I was forced to go to.
But without warning, Ed leaped from my palms, and my mother shrieked in surprise. Better yet, she was torn between disgust and terror. For such a tiny beast, it was a great leap of faith into the unknown. However, I discovered that unknown when I found Ed on the pavement in a perfect state to be dissected by Year 7s. I saw my mother had left her favorite rolling pin nearby. And thus I screamed. I shouted. I fell to the ground.
‘You are too old for tantrums like this!’ My wicked mother yelled with a passion greater than life. ‘You have no friends, you have no house, you hold no job, and this is what you do when you come back for your spring holiday?!’ Yes! Yes. Yes, mother, this is what I did on my spring holiday. I spent my spring holidays, stirring revenge in my soul, digging graves for amphibians who did not know better before then.
What could I have done? I had enough strength to create a nice bed of dirt for my own lovely mother to lie in. Two meters underneath the earth, far below where Ed lay in sudden peace. But not over a frog, no? Of course not! That was completely and utterly bizarre. I would never kill my mother. At least not over a frog.
Better yet, I had produced no tears of brine when I stood between my father and sister. Heads down, hats down, and my mother laid down in the grave that I dreamed of during the spring holidays. I bore no shame. And no, it was not over a poor frog. May he rest in peace.