Froggy

Froggy
By
Skully
Friday, November 17, 2006

Warm, comfortable and secure under layers of soft blankets, lying on his stomach clutching his best friend. An endearing companion and a more than adequate replacement for pacifiers long since outgrown, was “Froggy”.

He was purchased from Sears several years ago from the 1970 Christmas edition of the catalog. His thoughtful Mother saw the sparkle in her baby’s eyes when he discovered it while eagerly scanning the wonderful toys in the magical pages.

Squeezing Froggy tightly and pressing his face against his soft, foam filled, polyester friend, he softly mumbled, “night-night Froggy.”

At once daylight intervened, the cozy and warm place at the edge of dreams became other than the normal playground. He found himself sitting at a desk covered with paperwork and implements of business. “Where are we Froggy? There is a TV here but I don’t know how to work it. It looks weird, and it says Windows and password.” Froggy just smiled and stared with his gleaming black eyes. “This sure is a big chair and desk, I’m scared.” He wasn’t really scared, as he was an adventurer at heart. He loved to go to unknown places and sit in silence and listen to the sounds, to learn the new place, to put himself into the environment and become part of it.

“Let’s go exploring, Froggy, let’s see what this place is.” He slid out of the chair, holding Froggy tightly, as they crept across the worn carpet into the next room. “This is the same as the other room, it looks just like the stables at the fairgrounds. I wonder what they watch on the TVs, and what is Windows? Look, there’s a kitchen and everything, a refrigerator and stove and a sink…there are machines humming and they have blinking lights all over them. It looks like the Apollo place on TV when those guys went to the moon. I hope we don’t get in trouble for being here.”

“Mike…MIKE…HEY MIKE! The system has locked up again.” A voice, distant at first, encroaches on perceived reality as the scene changes. “Look Froggy, where did all of these people come from?” “Mike, didn’t you hear me? The system is locked again and we can’t afford another day of downtime.” The office manager was in a state of panic as my head cleared. “It’s nothing, the Internet connection bounced and it dropped the VPN tunnel. I’ll cycle power on the router and we’ll be back up in about three minutes.”

A dream of dreaming in the past is unsettling to say the least, but wonderful as well. As I sit in my big chair at my big desk, in my cubicle, performing tasks that keep the millions of dollars flowing, I have a feeling in the pit of my stomach; one that longs for the warm feeling of my best friend that now lies entombed in a large Tupperware container in the corner closet of the basement. “I love you, Froggy!”