Going Green

I spent today in physical labor, wheel-barrowing concrete for a friend. So I am far too tired to think of anything intelligent to say, and will instead give you a silly story. You might say it’s an illustration of the alien viewpoint, without the trammels of human mores.

Once upon a time, Princess Rana lived in a palace. Well, I say ‘princess’ because that is what her dear parents called her. And maybe it wasn’t quite a palace, but it did imitations of one. From her earliest days she heard her parents talk of how wonderful it was to be green, and of course she wanted nothing more than to be green. Being a very little princess, she also wanted to be a frog, because that was green. She told her parents she was a frog.

As she’d identified as a frog, her dear parents accepted at once that she was a frog. They bought her green frog-suits, and green flippers. They bought her special vegan ‘flies’ to eat. They helped her find a herpetophile group on facebook. They were enormously proud and supportive of her desire to be a frog.

Alas, it was still not enough for Princess Rana. She wanted to fully transition to being a frog. And her parents could not say no. And thus began the long process of hormonal treatment, and of course, surgery to magically transform her into a frog. They widened her mouth, and tattooed her skin green (a lovely viridian) and got rid of that un-froggish blond hair with suitable depilatories, and webbed her fingers and toes, and modified her vocal chords so she could croak. Making a common urogenital and anal opening took repeated surgery, but she was very pleased with the result.

Her parents bought her own pond, and stocked it other frogs, so she could hop and swim and frolic with them. They looked forward to tadpoles, but not one of those discriminatory male frogs as much as showed interest in happy hours of amplexus with her. Her anxious parents lobbied government and bought some fine art-work and a new anti-transfrog legislation was tabled and passed to the delight of herpetophiles everywhere.

Alas. The frogs still liked other cis-frogs more than her. Even jail-time – inevitable because they would croak back at the judge – did not change their attitude. One of the frogs she kissed did turn into a prince, with a golden ball, but he wanted princess not a frog, and a castle that did not have a moat, or even a pond, and she wanted a frog not a prince, so they went their separate ways. And after some months of lying around in a pond, with no-one to croak to and her i-pads getting wet, Princess Rana decided she wasn’t a frog anymore.

There is no happily ever after in this modern fairy story.

Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay