Scarily, someone has been requesting this story which took place four years ago or so. I am described in some ways by the word “geek” and that was true even more back then.

As much time as I spent on computers, breaks were a necessity and I soon turned to long walks. It was not uncommon for them to be 7-12 miles at a time across town and out in the country. Some late nights I scared dating teenagers who were clinging to each other at the end of their driveways. Watching them run off yelling and screaming was great fun, and meeting with the guard dogs that farmers owned was not.

About half-way across town was a park with a pond. The city had erected a sign, and I’m scared to think how many committees had to approve it. Here is what it said:

Not that it mattered much. Half of the times that I was there were after dark when the park was officially closed. Sometimes I would sneak over under the shadows of the trees though and just sit down for a bit. The police never evicted me from that park, but it may simply have been that I was there alone and they couldn’t see me.

One particular night there was something else there though. As I walked around the pond (being careful not to wad, because that was forbidden according to the sign), a voice called out to me for help. I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from until it yelled “down here.”

Those are scary words. Just like in the fairy tales, there was a frog sitting there. No, it was not a cartoon frog—it was a real one. I picked it up as it started to explain that it was the daughter of a board member of two Fortune 500 companies. “She” promised me that she could make any wish of mine come true if only I kissed her and returned her to her unenchanted form (it has been too long and the story was complex for how she became enchanted in the first place). Her tale caused me to forget the late night programming problems that I had been facing so after she finished I dropped her in my pocket.

Don’t worry, the pocket had plenty of space for her because of all those walks I was taking at the time.

Like most girls, this action confused her badly and her reaction was to start yelling questions. After a couple minutes, I pulled her back out and listened to her rant for a short while before restoring her to my pocket. This process was repeated most of the way home and it was probably fortunate that there were not many people on the road at that time of night.

Finally she was exasperated badly enough that when I pulled her out of my pocket she asked, “Why do you keep pulling me out of your pocket, smiling at me, and putting me back?” If her father really was a board member of two large companies, you would think she would know something about the world of money. Those ideas must not have ever entered her mind. Thankfully I was not entirely that cruel.

My answer? “Oh, I’m a computer geek. I don’t have time for girls. But a talking frog? Now that’s cool!”