Created
May 26, 2012 18:34
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The One Armed Frog (posted to thelistserve.com on May 26th 2012)
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I have a tattoo of a frog on the top of my right foot. I drew him myself. When | |
people ask me why I always say that when I take a step, he hops. | |
But there’s a story behind that. | |
I was tree planting one year. While planting you need to move fast, the more | |
trees in the ground the more money you would make. I was never all that great | |
at it but I stuck with it and at the very least I kept going. | |
One rainy day, on a hill surrounded by tree stumps and torn up branches, | |
I threw my shovel into the ground to open up space in the dirt for a little | |
tree but as the blade of my shovel came down a frog hopped onto the path. The | |
shovel came down onto his shoulder. | |
The frog’s arm was cut off. Not completely, though, there was a small flap of | |
muscle/skin hanging on (if you’ve ever read Harry Potter, think of Nearly | |
Headless Nick) and the frog was wriggling around on the ground, likely in a lot | |
of pain. | |
I was a little shocked. I stared at the frog a little while, and it never made | |
a sound. I looked around, walking a few steps to see if someone was nearby. | |
Probably for moral support, but I hadn’t really thought that far ahead. | |
I didn’t know if I should try to kill the frog, knowing that with it’s injury | |
it would be easy prey and have difficulty moving around to get it’s own food. | |
I decided to go back to check on the frog. | |
He was gone, somehow moving himself back into the brush. I still wonder if his | |
arm wasn’t as bad as I thought. Either way, he'll figure things out for | |
himself. | |
I’ve had other tragedies in my life, ones that easily surpass the armless frog | |
in the scale of life changes and impact, but the frog gave me things to think | |
about, which turned into something that I learned. | |
The memory of that frog comes with me every time I take a step forward. Bad | |
things will happen, you must remember them but don’t ever stop moving forward. | |
Things will sort themselves out as long as you do. | |
He’ll remind me, when things get troublesome, to keep hopping. | |
Vera Suzanne | |
arevera.vera@gmail.com | |
Ontario, Canada |
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