The Sad Tragedy of My Stuffed Bean Bag Frog Named Elmer

This is Elmer. He's a frog. He's usually a pretty happy frog. He's been with me forever.

In 5th grade, I sat next to a girl in class who owned Elmer. She used to sit him on her desk. A friend of mine and I (don't remember the friend's name to this day) used to grab Elmer and play catch with him. This usually didn't go over very well. But we did it every day.

Some months later, Elmer started showing up on my desk in the mornings before I arrived to school. He and I became friends. I don't know if Elmer chose to sit on my desk, or if the little girl who owned him put him there. You see, Elmer has always been somewhat of his own frog, pretty much living for what he wants to do. He's a real individual.

Anyway, in 6th grade, that little girl gave Elmer to me, saying that he had become my friend and should belong to me.

So, Elmer moved in with me. And he's been with me ever since. He's been in the military with me (people called him Lt. Elmer). He traveled around the world with me. He never traveled as baggage; he was always brought with me to wherever I went, sometimes in my luggage, but he was always the first of my little friends to emerge.

Over the years, other women I have known have contributed various stuffed animals to my vast collection. They have always been special to me. But aside from Joshua, my little penguin, Elmer has always been the senior of the stuffed animals. He watched over the others because he had experience and he knew how to keep the others safe.

Well, Facebook is a really interesting service, and by surprise, I came in contact with that little girl who gave me Elmer. I was really excited about this because I wanted to show her how well Elmer had been taken care of, that he was still my little buddy. So I sent her this picture you see here, and I waited to hear her response. To my shock, she said that the frog looked familiar, but she didn't know anything about him.

Both Elmer and I were devastated. I had told him we were going to be showing her a picture of him, and he was all excited. But she didn't remember Elmer at all.

Fortunately, Elmer and I still have each other. But I'm having a hard time explaining to him how such a thing could happen. Bean bag frogs don't handle this sort of thing well.

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