Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Winning one for the jumper

A man asks me if I want to buy a frog.
I say no thank you, for I was always taught to be polite; no matter how strange the conversation.
He says it can jump farther than most frogs. If there was an Olympics for frogs this one would win first prize, he says with conviction.
A gold medal, I correct him as I wonder why there are no Olympic events for animals without humans on their backs?
What use is gold to a frog? he demands as I feel myself being sucked into his world of alternative realism.
I say again: I do not want to buy a frog.
What about a share in a frog, he says, we could form a syndicate and hire a better trainer for him; we could get lots of endorsements for him once he wins the Tour de France and we could charge stud fees?
I ask where he found the frog, in a mad grasp for the safety of sane discourse.
He found me. It was meant to happen, he says. I was out on Saturday night and on Sunday morning when I awoke in a field the said frog was sitting on my belly.
What did he say?
Frogs can't speak beyond a croak on Sunday mornings, he says and somehow I feel I have lost something in his estimation, though what it is I cannot say.
I'll find someone else to invest he says, asking for bus fare to the far side of the city where a man lives in a small house who knows about racing frogs, he says.
I part with some coins and we part from one another, forever, for now.
I cannot shake the feeling that I have missed a wonderful investment opportunity.
A world champion jumping frog.

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