The Frog Test

I was about five years old when I first held a frog–a big mottled thing, cold as a well-rope and twice as slippery.

It leaped out of my hands like it was shot from a cannon and landed square in Cousin Janice’s cereal bowl. Milk went flying. She cried. Mom swatted at me with the dishtowel, but I still count that morning as one of the better ones of my boyhood.

Nowadays, I see little kids no taller than a fence post strutting around with smartphones like Wall Street traders. They’re tapping screens with sticky fingers, recording their dogs behind, and accidentally calling Grandma three times a day.

And I think, “That child couldn’t catch a frog to save their life.”

Out in the country—just northeast of nowhere and way south of who-cares—catching a frog was a rite of passage. Before getting trusted with a BB gun, the front seat, or the garden hose, you had to prove yourself amphibiously.

I remember when I gave my brother his first frog lesson. He was four, all knees and cowlicks, and full of questions nobody had time to answer. He’d been begging for a bike because all his friends had one.

I said, “Before you learn to pedal around the neighborhood, let’s see if you can talk to the pond.”

So we set off that Saturday morning just as the sun turned the dew to glitter. Adam wore his brand-new sneakers—white as wedding mints—and I didn’t have the heart to warn him.

Let nature do the teaching. We squished down into the reeds, dragonflies zipping around like they had places to be. I showed him where the frogs liked to sit—half in the water, half in the mud, just like old fogies in a hot tub.

He spotted one—a fat green jumper with eyes like wet marbles—and lunged like a linebacker. Missed by a mile and face-planted into the muck.

He popped up, coughing pond water and grinning like he’d found treasure. I helped him, wiped the slime off his cheeks with the hem of my T-shirt, and said, “Try again. But slower this time.”

It took him four tries, the loss of one shoe, and a stubbed toe, but he finally got his hands around one. He held it out to me like it was glass.

That frog just blinked, legs twitching like it was embarrassed. Adam’s hands shook, eyes wide, and he whispered, “It’s alive.”

“Yep,” I said. “And don’t squeezing so hard..”

We sat there a while, watching that frog, talking about how the world don’t need to be shiny to be interesting. Adam never screamed or flung it as some kids do. He just held and studied it, then let it jump back into the cattails.

Later that year, our folks gave him a tricycle.

And that’s the lesson, I suppose. Before you gift a kid a bike or cell phone, give them something genuine. Something that jumps and squirms and teaches patience.

Let them hold a frog first. If the kid can do that without freaking out or flinging it, maybe they’re ready for the rest of it–or maybe not.

Either way, they’ll know where to find peace when the Wi-Fi’s down.