Bzzz…slurp! Gladia’s eyes snapped up from her plate. Where a moment before a little fly had hovered, there remained only air. That thing, that green complected freeloader, had actually flicked his tongue out over her candied yams…OVER HER YAMS…and snatched up the fly. At the end of the royal table, her father clapped and shouted, “Well, done!” While all of her sisters giggled behind their hands and shot her smug, triumphant glances. Harpies! This couldn’t be happening. She was a princess. Beautiful, adored…and, yes, a little spoiled…but had she really done anything so wrong? It was a promise to a frog…a frog, for heaven’s sake. Surely her father could find some way to make the slimy thing hit the bricks…literally. Or maybe she could solve the problem on her own. What could be more gracious than inviting her little guest on an after dinner walk? A stroll around the castle. A visit to the stables. Lots of lovely flies in the stables, dear froggy. But do mind the horses. Mustn’t get under their hooves…their big, heavy hooves. Gladia smiled and tucked her delicate chin to her chest. With perfect poise, she would endure this first, and hopefully last, dinner with the pushy amphibian. Now she could afford to be congenial; she had a plan. Oh dear, the nasty thing just winked at her. Who does he think he is a handsome prince? Inspired by “The Frog Prince”.
Plato and a platypus walk into a bar. When the bartender gave the philosopher a quizzical look, Plato shrugged and said, “What can I say? She looked better in the cave.” Source: Plato and a Platypus: How to Understand Philosophy through Jokes by Thomas Cathcart & Daniel Klein
OR…”Before you find your handsome prince (or princess), you have to kiss a lot of frogs.” Popular Wisdom.
Across the course of my life, I have kissed a lot of frogs. Bull frogs, peepers, toads and hoppers, I’ve kissed them all, always believing that the next gooey smooch might be the one that ends in happily ever after. What can I say? I’m nothing if not determined. But before you assume my long history of amphibian osculation is limited to romantic entanglements, I should explain that I have courted frogs in every area of my life from jobs to education to domiciles. For each new situation, I don my rose-colored glasses and blind myself to the inconvenience of warty, green reality. Plato would tell me that I was making choices based on shadows rather than truth and he would be right (The Allegory of the Cave). But where is an ancient Greek philosopher when you need one? In a world of reality TV and 24/7 advertising, I suspect the old Athenian would throw up his hands and concede the shadows had won.
If you’re like me, you work hard to make the right choices. But the hours I spend considering the pros and cons, asking advice, and collecting information typically result in me feeling completely overwhelmed and then surrendering to my best guess. So many of my decisions were not meant to be permanent, but patches to get me over the gaps where my plans had frayed. Looking back, my life stretches away like an existential crazy quilt of incompatible hues and fabrics, hurriedly basted together against the day when I would come back and put everything right. Now, I just hope all the stitches hold.
For the princess and Plato, their decisions were only as good as their best information. The princess had no clue that the viridian-faced interloper in her life was a handsome prince ready to make all of her dreams come true. In the joke, it takes the hard light of day for Plato to see the beauty he chatted up in the shadowy cave isn’t all he hoped she would be. Despite all of the popular advice about how easy it is to turn your world around, to reorganize, to reboot and live a new life free of complications and mistakes, we still can only know what we know, pieces of the big picture will always be hidden. Though I like to think I’ve kissed my last frog, I can’t be sanguine about my chances. Every day is full of choices–most of them little ones, thank goodness–but for the big ones, the ones that cause my palms to sweat and my muscles to tense, I’m going to load up on the lip gloss. After all, to find the hidden prince, we have to take a leap and kiss the frog.
Being Dorothy 