I was assaulted by a giant tree frog this morning.
I was wandering out of my bedroom in the morning, after a number of annoying dreams where I dreamed my alarm went off, when I reality it had not, when I walked into my kitchen and noticed a blob on the wall. I was not wearing my glasses so I edged closer warily trying to figure out what it was. With an insane cat brining a constant barrage of wildlife into my house, I have come to approach things cautiously. When I was a couple feet away I started to realize it was some sort of monstrous tree frog. My suspicion was confirmed when it suddenly launched itself from the wall and hit my bare chest with an audible sticky ‘slop’. It was cold and slimy and sticky and I’ll freely admit I screeched like a little girl. Once it had slapped it off I then chased it around the kitchen and finally cornered it with a plastic cup and tossed it outside.
I threw away the cheap Tupperware container I had on the kitchen counter because I cannot stand the fact that it might have been squatting in it. In fact now I have to scrub down my entire kitchen tonight of imagined frog juice.
Anyways, another character from spring fest.
Ron had brought a complete lounging setup for the springfest. He had a gazebo roof tent with a fold out table and several sheets of fabric that he pinned up for territory marking and privacy. Right in the front of the gazebo he hung a rather large gong. Some spooky rabbit he had picked up somewhere was put to work holding the gong striker and several religious candles lit the entire thing up. In face I spent a good chunk of the festival sitting next to the gong buzzing drunk and yelling at people to come over and hit the gong.
People wandering by were delighted to hit the gong. They would hit it and give a laugh at the deep rich gong sound it made. Some times Ron and I would be off wandering in the woods, and far off in the distance we would hear someone hit the gong. Long after I went to bed in the wee hours of the night I would hear the gong being hit. It was funny as hell, but to be honest on Sunday morning when I was ready to go I swear I was going to scream if I heard the gong hit one more time.
Anyways, some old fat white haired hippie dude was camping with his family a little ways down the road. One afternoon he buzzed up on one of those old people scooters. He quickly explained to me that he was not handicapped, but that it was in fact his wife’s scooter, and he was just riding around. As if I would think less of him for being a cripple. Anyways he eyeballed the gong and asked about the gong. I asked him if he wanted to ring the gong, and he thought about it for a moment, and then decided he was ‘not ready’ to hit the gong, but he would come hit it when the time was right. He then buzzed away.
A night or two later I hear out in the darkness some drunken ranting. It was that old dude again. He had one of those old-people walkers with four wheels on it, but instead of using it to walk he was sitting on it while his great fat buffoon of a sun pushed him along. They eventually arrived at my gong, and the old dude decided he was going to philosophize for a bit.
So he went off on a long ramble about how the gong was like life. I really do not recall his deep points of his subject, except he mentioned ‘sperm and egg’ several times and he took an awful long time to say it. Now, I suppose he was trying to strike a dignified pose because he had his arms up in the air in a tranquil pose as he recanted as to why the gong was a parable of life. However, any dignity he was trying to muster was completely ruined by his big buffoon of his son who, standing behind him, casually zipped down his fly and started whizzing on the tree next to him. He did not go behind the tree in any even token act of privacy, but just took a good long piss right where he was standing while his elderly father went on a loud drunken ramble in front of him. Ron and I were just sort of standing and sitting there too bemused to say anything.
The old man finished his ramble at roughly the same time his son finished pissing, and the old many gave the gong a heft wack. He then tried singing a few songs, tried to get Ron and I into a sing-a-long with him, until his son grew bored and wheeled him off into the darkness.
Later that night a skinny bearded hippy with coke-bottle bottom glasses was walking by with his wife. I yelled at him to come hit the gong. He ambled over, held his face about three inches from the gong, squinted, and said:
“Where’s the gong?”
2026 Update
Dialing to April 2008, where Ed gets slapped by an amphibian and then philosophized at by a gong shaman.
Eighteen years later, your kitchen frog assault reads like a lost artifact from a world before everyone’s face was glued to a tiny glass rectangle. Back then you had a physical alarm clock that could torment you with fake dreams. Now the phone screams at me and by the time I open my eyes I have already been notified of fourteen apocalypses. Also, the random festival gong: that whole scene is extinct. In 2026 the old hippie and his pissing son would be on someone’s livestream before the second stanza of “sperm and egg” left his mouth. Strangers don’t amble over because they hear a gong; they stop because there is a ring light and a tripod. And you threw away Tupperware because a frog “might have squatted in it.” That is beautiful, Ed. Today that container would be listed online as a “rare vintage reunion special” and some collector would pay sixty dollars for the frog provenance. The gong was the last honest public art installation before everything became content.
“2008 Ed, when the old philosopher’s son unzipped and watered the tree in perfect sync with his father’s gong sermon, did you realize you were witnessing the entire history of human dignity in one act, or were you just grateful he didn’t aim at your Tupperware?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2008 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, I gotta say, at the time I was mostly just grateful my cheap Tupperware was safe, because after that tree frog assault I'd already thrown away one container and I wasn't about to lose another. But yeah, there was a moment where I sort of watched that old philosopher with his arms up, rambling about sperm and egg, and his son just casually watering the tree like it was the most natural thing in the world, and I thought: this is humanity. This is the whole damn thing right here. Dignity and a dude taking a piss behind his own father's sermon, all in perfect sync. Ron and I just sat there bemused. I didn't have words for it then, but yeah, I think I saw it. Also, the gong got hit, which seemed to make the old man happy, so that's something. Take that, profound moments.
