Just an Annoying Little Frog

Once, when my son, Sam had just started high school, I played Bunco with a group of teacher friends.  It was only that one time, and I was clearly very bad at playing the game, because when the night was finished, I won the booby prize.   The prize was a hard plastic frog about ten inches across.  He isn’t a very handsome frog, but he has one talent.  When you fill him with batteries and turn the switch on the bottom to ‘on’, he becomes a master of annoyance.  He has a sensor near his nose, and when he senses a change in light, he croaks.

Mr. Frog comes home

I nearly tossed Mr. Frog in the garbage, but then I had a wonderful, awful idea that would have made the Grinch proud.  I tiptoed into Sam’s room – I really didn’t need to tiptoe, he wasn’t home at the time but it sounds better – and I secreted Mr. Frog underneath Sam’s bed.

I giggled quietly when Sam came home later and I heard Mr. Frog’s greeting in a series of croaks.  It took Sam a while, but eventually he found our new friend among the loner socks and dirty shirts under his bed.  I expected him to bring him to me with a complaint or laugh but then Sam did an interesting thing.  He didn’t say anything to me about it.

A week or so later, I was surprised when I opened the dryer and was greeted by Mr. Frog.

So began the epic exchange of Mr. Frog between Sam and me.  Mr. Frog has traveled in a box to Scotland when Sam was in grad school in Glasgow.  He has shown up when and where I’ve least expected it and been the object of hours of sneaky planning.   The last time I saw Mr. Frog was about five years ago.  Sam became engaged to his lovely Allison, and she and I began emailing back and forth.  Eventually, I enlisted her help, and mailed Mr. Frog to her with instructions to secret him under Sam’s sink in a guest bathroom.  I still have the voice mail Sam left me when he found Mr. Frog.  It took him quite a while to figure out that Allison was my accomplice.

Sam and Allison are married now, and Sam is adopting twelve-year-old Madison as his own.  We’ve just spent a great week together here on my island, snorkeling and sunburning and playing giant Jenga in the yard.  The night they arrived I got them all tucked into their beds then headed to my own.  I can’t even tell you how pleased I was when Mr. Frog croaked at me from beneath my pillow, or how fun it was when I heard Madison’s giggle from the other room.  It looks like Mr. Frog has become important now to a third generation of tricksters.

Sam, after an especially daring Jenga move.