As a kid, I lived in a small town and walked four blocks to school every day. There was a pale boy in my class who wore Sears Perma-Prest flares with little snap pockets on the front. His hat-shaped hair was blonde and straight and a little bit too long. It flipped out at the bottom. He looked like a sad mushroom.

One day I made a deal with him to trade a pencil for a frog he had caught in his backyard.

The deal went down on the way home after school. I waited on the front steps outside of his house while he went in to get the frog. The screen door smelled of metal and must. I was nervous, watching the street behind me half expecting the kid to be a nark reporting me for illegal amphibian trade.

He came out. I gave him my pencil. He gave me a shoebox containing a frog.

I don’t remember walking the two blocks home. I was excited. Elated, even. Imagining all the things my frog and I would do together.

I had changed my life for the better, all on my own.

But I had to tell my parents.

It was a time in history when my mom was concerned not so much about the frog, but that I had traded away my perfectly good pencil. A yellow, #2. Then, a pencil wasn’t just the thing you needed to do your homework. It was a thing that eased passage from kindergarten to twelfth grade to life beyond. People were always chewing them, stealing them, or using them as weapons. They had value. Like a shiv in prison.

Almost immediately, my parents shut down any future I might have had with my frog, explaining just because it’s possible for a living thing to survive in a shoebox with holes, it doesn’t mean it should.

Resigned, I took my frog outside to let him go in the backyard. I crawled underneath the privet hedge, pressing my face against the grass, gently tipped him out of the box onto the dirt, and said goodbye as he hopped away.

We only knew each other for a few hours, but we were already friends.

…

My childhood was like living inside a circus. There were dogs, horses, and a hinny. There were cats, rabbits, and a dwarf hamster. There were sea monkeys, flying squirrels, and a lamb. There were fish, gerbils, and a gecko. There were guinea pigs, deer, and a fox. And, of course, a frog.

Rounding out the insane lot, were my parents.

All of my days, whether spent in celebration, grief, or in the quiet spaces in between, continue to be an adventure of a lifetime.

These are my stories.