BOY MEETS FROG

The first time that I saw the frog, I was sitting in class. Its face was pressed up to
the window next to me from the outside. I had been drawing in my notebook, but
once I noticed it, I couldn’t stop looking. It couldn’t stop looking at me either (if it
had been a staring contest, I would have lost). Maybe frogs blinked, but with its
big eyes smushed against the glass, this one didn’t. Stagwood Forest was just
beyond the school yard and it was riddled with frogs, but they always avoided
people. I knew right away, in a way that I can think better than I can say, that this
frog was different.

Miss Weaver hadn’t noticed. She’d been my teacher for a few months, and was
known for having a stack of black hair that rose a foot above her head. Before the
school year started, I had heard rumors about her, and within a week I realized that
they were all true. For one thing, she wore the same outfit every day; the colors
changed, but she always had on striped pants and a striped jacket. For another
thing, she was mind-numbingly boring. The kind of boring that makes your eyes
shut without your permission. Part of the problem was that she liked to tell
pointless stories instead of teaching. She was obsessed with telling stories about
former students who had become famous. The first couple of times weren’t bad,
even kind of interesting, but by the second week of school she had already started
repeating herself, just like with her outfits.

I knew all the stories by heart. The professional football player who was good at
math, the politician who was a teacher’s pet; I knew every word. Instead of
listening, I spent most of class drawing. I drew imaginary places, and designed
creatures to fill them. Every drawing had a story. But not that day. I had barely
gotten started when the frog appeared, and changed my life forever.

I tried to listen back in to Miss Weaver, just in time to hear the end of her story
about Martin Shandals, the now-famous comedian. Martin had transferred schools
half way through the year, so I always felt like that one shouldn’t count. We were
supposed to be learning long division, but something had reminded her of Martin. I
knew exactly what bad joke she would end the story with, and much less about
long division.

“Whenever he acted up in class I’d say, ‘we’ve got a real comedian on our hands
don’t we?’ And I was right!” she said with a giggle.

I was sure Miss Weaver would see the frog eventually, but she didn’t. Nobody did.
When I looked again to see if it was still there, I noticed something shiny. It made
me forget all about class, and Miss Weaver and Martin Shandals. There was no
denying it: the frog had put on a tiny pair of glasses.

I wanted to lecture it, to explain that frogs don’t wear glasses. It bothered me that
it didn’t already know that. On top of t