The Frog!

The year before my wife graduated from high school (don’t even think I’m going to say the year)… she acquired a concrete frog. The frog stayed with her through the rest of high school, her trip off to college, the 17 years of her first marriage, and 23 years of our marriage. This was an outdoor frog – he wasn’t housebroken.

The frog lived in Iowa, Florida, Rhode Island, Illinois, Louisiana, California, and Minnesota. He weathered cold, ice, snow, 2 hurricanes, 1.5 earthquakes, and the brutality of movers, but our home was not home without the concrete frog sitting by the front door. Last year – the cold, snow, and ice finally took their toll, and when the snow cleared, all that was left was a crumbled bit of concrete.

Two of our grandkids thought that the frog should have a burial, so they buried what was left of the frog in a flower bed and used a brick for a headstone (above photo). Katharine gave a beautiful eulogy for the frog, which ended, “… I hope he goes to hell…”.

“Katharine!” her brother yelled, “Grandma, she said a bad word.” When Grandma inquired about why she would say such a thing, Katharine said, “I couldn’t spell heaven…”.

Yesterday, while at Target, we came upon a frog (unpainted) that looked exactly like the recently deceased and buried frog. The frog was purchased, and we tromped off to Lowe’s Hardware to buy frog paint. The guy at the paint counter got a chuckle over the story and said he had never been asked to pick out paint for a frog.

Here is our newest addition…