Put on your jammies, brush your teeth, hop into bed & I'll tell you a story.
Once
upon a time, there was a young elephant named Freddy who desperately wanted to
be a frog. He loved the way they hopped
and jumped. He loved their green color
and since they spent so much time in the water, they were never coated with
dust (which bothered his allergies) like he usually was. He even tried living on a strict diet of
insects and flies, but to tell you the truth, he never felt full. He had found a
Berlitz book someone had lost while on safari and studied their language until
he was fully proficient in Frogese.
Freddy
felt like he was a frog. He often wondered if he had accidentally been
switched at birth. Even his name seemed
wrong. Everyone knows that the first
names of animals are supposed to start with the first letter of their species,
like his mother and father, Elizabeth and Edward Elephant. “Freddy” should be a name for a frog!
Every
morning when he woke up, he would have a big bowl of flies and a multivitamin
and kiss his mom goodbye. He then headed
out to a clearing in the jungle where he would practice jumping for hours. The ground trembled under his weight. This frightened many of the natives, who
would yell, “Tetemeko, tetemeko!!” until they were told, “Hiyo tu Freddy tembo.
Yeye kufanya mazoezi ya kuruka.” (On the
off-chance that your Swahili is a little rusty, allow me to translate:
“Earthquake, earthquake!!” “That's just
Freddy the elephant. He’s practicing
jumping.”)
As
you can well imagine, all that jumping made Freddy very tired. After practice he would come home to take a
much needed nap. When he slept, he
dreamed—a lot! In them, he was often a combination of
elephant and frog. He dreamed he was
attacked by a crocodile who was only able to grab one of his ears (because
Freddy was still elephant-sized) and couldn’t drag him under the water. He dreamed that he tried to rest on a lily
pad, but both he and the lily pad sank to the bottom of the river with a splash
that was alarmingly similar to a tidal wave!
When he found himself frog-sized he had to catch flies by impaling them
on his tusks--can you imagine how difficult that would be?
Freddy
finally decided that maybe he wouldn’t make a very good frog, after all, but
that didn’t stop him from loving them dearly.
In fact, one day when he was out for a walk (elephants need regular
exercise, you know, or they tend to develop big floppy stomachs) he met Felicia
Frog. She was new in town, having just
hopped over to visit some cousins. He
took one look at her, and she at him, and it was love at first sight. He asked her to marry him. She charmingly flicked out her tongue and
caught a passing fly, swallowed it and answered, “Yes!” Freddy was mesmerized, awestruck at her
beauty and talent. They had a lovely
ceremony which was conducted by John J. Jaguar, Justice of the Peace.
It
wasn’t too long before Felicia was expecting their first child. Freddy was concerned that the baby would be a
misfit like the creature he had been in his dreams. When his offspring was born, Freddy was
relieved that all his worries had been for nothing. Farrah Elizabeth Frog-Elephant (she was named
after her grandmothers and later shortened her last name) was the most
beautiful baby he had ever seen! Her
skin was the loveliest shade of green, her tiny baby tusks were adorable and
her warts were exquisite. She had
inherited all the best qualities of both frogs and elephants. Everyone oohed
and aahed on seeing this lovely
creature.
From Robert Brault--"I like to think that I've achieved a certain social status, assuming outcast is a status"----fishducky
