Of Frogs and Children I was maybe four years old, my brother two. We were staying at the country house we used to have. Directly in front of the porch’s screen door was a small pond, not more than four feet deep, yet even so a veritable endless pit to us toddlers. This murky trench happened to be teeming with catchable frogs, and in its center was an ominous drainage pipe that generated vicious whirlpools, sucking up and obliterating any diminutive amphibians whose languorous orbit came too close.
On the porch, which was enshrouded by screen to ensnare irritating mosquitoes, the adults had gathered. They indulged in meticulously-prepared dishes of delectable subtleties that our hamburglared taste-buds couldn’t appreciate. My parents waxed philosophical about child-rearing to their junior siblings-in-law.
We were picking up rocks and putting them in buckets. Who knows why this was how we had decided to dispense of our youthful hours. We were not aware, of course, that our innocence would expire someday, and so we were free to waste away our ephemeral stay in the abode of immaturity by gathering heaps of infinite stones.
Evening was approaching rapidly; the atmosphere was grey like old people’s hair, the summer air was filled by a mild chill. We had collected by now three red buckets loaded with rocks and pebbles. Oh, it was all so quaint.
But then my brother seized a few of the stones from one of the buckets and tossed them curiously into the pond. They registered a menacing splash, an insatiable kerplunk, and then they sunk. What an idiot! Didn’t he realize that they were now lost forever to the non-swimmer? That they would never return, never cease to frustrate my limitless wonder, just like the opposite of a released helium balloon?
I felt so helpless that I was enraged, so I screamed the first pseudo-curse-word that popped into my head, and then I pushed him into the pond. I watched his chubby, cherubic mass swirl about the lucid nucleus for a few seconds. He was lucky not to be so small as a frog; the constantly sucking drainage pipe couldn’t swallow him, but he could sure swallow himself. I couldn’t tell or can’t remember whether he was gagging, choking or wailing, but he looked kind of like a baby bird about to eat its mother’s vomit. The image burned itself onto my eyes, and the burn ignited a scream at the top of my lungs: “Mommy, Daddy! Mark fell in the water!”
My mother rushed out of the house at once, descended upon the pond like a cormorant, trained by more than just the Red Cross to perform one fundamental action, and she scooped him out of the water.
I told her that he had slipped. He was likely too shocked to know otherwise. And certainly too innocent to betrayal to say otherwise. She told me she was so proud that I’d been smart enough to call for her.
I should be proud, shouldn’t I? Such a smart little boy. I stopped collecting rocks, started my own coin collection, and didn’t really ever tell anybody about all this. Even years later when my mother reminisced about the primal fear of that moment, I did not divulge the fact of my primal rage. I don’t suppose my deed would be legible for amnesty. However much she could try rationalize the actions of a two-year-old, only a god could forgive a Cain. And even though Lenny didn’t live to know it, George’s bullet shattered one fruitless brain and a million hearts.
Sometimes I wonder what things would’ve been like. If I’d known what I was doing, done it, and just let it happen. But when I look back at the situation, I don’t feel guilty. My primary concern is, where did all those rocks go?