Frogboy Tips & Tales*

Tip One

It is highly advisable, I realized just this morning, to keep only one squeeze tube product on the bathroom shelf. Otherwise, sooner or later , it will inevitably come to pass that you end up brushing your teeth with athlete's foot cream instead of toothpaste.

Tho' there may be something to be said for a fungus free mouth, it can really ruin your breakfast.

A Frogboy Tale

We, a small pod of friends, were sitting at dinner just last evening, when the discussion turned to films and film actors. One certain hot property came up and I remarked as to how his acclaim lay not so much in his talent as in the inherently sympathetic roles he has landed. In the most, perhaps, well known of these his character proclaims that "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get." It struck me at the time and I remarked at table, "A weak simile at best. I, personally, have had good chocolates and bad chocolates, but for chocolates to be as much a crap shoot as life is, there would have to be a much higher chance of biting into one and discovering it to be filled with that which you normally scoop out of a cat box."

School Days

I was a few days away from graduating high school when an incident occurred that sort of crystallized my whole experience of the public education system. This was a time of much protest against any and all authority and the war in Viet Nam most especially. I was aware that some friends of mine were going to pass out leaflets that day in front of the school after classes were dismissed for the day. (Said leaflets, by the by, were printed by the government explaining the various draft classifications, and available in any draft board office. Hardly inflammatory or radical.)

For one reason or another I was slow in leaving that afternoon, and as I exited through the front door I encountered a friend stumbling up the walk toward the building, a bit bloodied, definitely dazed, clutching the remains of his broken glasses in his hand. As he handed out the leaflets he had been assaulted by several of the right wing jocks who pummeled him while being egged on from a classroom window by some members of the faculty .

I helped him back into the building to get cleaned up and composed. In the hallway we were accosted by the principal and a math teacher who was known by my experience to waste class time proselytizing on the righteousness of murdering women and children with napalm. These gentlemen(?) assailed us with such witticisms as "Guess they showed you!" and "Serves you right for handing out that pinko literature." In response, I said to the principal, "I think that if Mr..------- has the right to spout his war mongering, racist propaganda in his math classes, then J----- certainly has the right to stand on the public sidewalk and hand out legal leaflets."

Suddenly, I found myself grabbed by the front of my shirt and slammed up against the wall of lockers behind me by the principal who bellowed into my face, "You think? You think! And who gave you permission to think?"

Who gave me permission to think, indeed. Obviously, NOT the public school system.

* Horrors, no! This most certainly is NOT a gourmet recipe!