The End of Innocence

I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned it here before, but I believe that innocence is lost in stages. It has nothing to do with sex. It has everything to do with losing the faith that we have that the world is basically good and that everything fits into our own perfect pretty little version of life.

I often talk about my own first loss of innocence. I was probably about 10 or 11 years old. I was still quite the tomboy and spent most of the summer at a pond at the end of the street where my parents' still live catching frogs in various stages of life. The whole process had begun the summer before or perhaps even the summer before that. A friend (another tomboy) and I were enthralled with the stages of the frogs' development ~ the tadpole, which started tiny and just got bigger, the front legs, the hind legs and finally the loss of the tale.

By that year we were masters at catching the full grown frogs and had created a habitat for them on the backporch of my parents house. We carried bucket after bucket of pond water home in galvanized buckets to nearly fill the 30 gallon plastic trash barrel my father had donated to the effort. We took weed from the pond as well to best recreate the habitat for our new pets. These were the years before the internet ~ we were still writing basic code for a TSR80 to perform basic algebra or make a tree of asterisks ~ so our knowledge of frog habitats was pretty limited.

We did, of course, name the frogs, or at least the big ones that were the most challenging to catch. Our largest frog was called Bubba. Every evening, I would cover the trash can with chicken wire and a few rocks to hold it down and yet every morning, I would come out to find fewer frogs in my frog family. I better molded the chicken wire to the top of the barrel, I put larger rocks on top of it, I lowered the water level, at night I started removing the little frog home I had created from an empty milk jug ~ anything to try to keep the frogs from escaping. But it continued. Our prized, named, large frogs seemed content enough to stay, but the smaller ones, which we easily replaced, had unbelievable escape skills.

Then one morning I came out to the frogs to find Bubba floating contentedly with a pair of frog legs hanging out of his mouth. I screamed at the volume and octave that only a ten year old girl can achieve and my father came running. I couldn't speak at first and then I started saying it quickly over and over again. There's a frog eating a frog! My father was completely unphased by my revelation of historic precedent and quite possibly highly amused. He looked at me calmly and said, "I thought you knew they were cannibals" Obviously not. That was my last summer with the frogs. I dumped the whole 30 gallon trash barrel into the back yard that day, not caring if they could actually find their way back to the pond or wind up trapped in the filter of one of the neighbors swimming pools or worse, roadkill on a rainy night. Cannibals??? How could he possibly think his child would knowingly keep cannibals as pets???

I tell this story now because I'm about to share someone else's first loss of innocence. He probably won't remember and I or his mother will have to tell him the story when he's older, most likely, over and over as tears run down our faces.

Now in Texas, exterminators are just a part of life. My sister has found an environmentally friendly one that uses nothing that will harm toddlers, cats, or unborn babies. Calling and scheduling an appointment has been on her list since February. "Bugman" Yesterday she finally called and got an appointment for today. She and my nephew went to the library and grocery store in the morning so they could be home for the bugman between 12 and 2pm.

It wasn't until the two of them were waiting that my sister realized that they had hugely different expectations of what was going to happen that afternoon. When my nephew said "Maybe he will say "Bzzz-bzzz and sing songs about bugs," my sister knew she was in trouble.

When Stefan, the bugman, arrived, my nephew was obviously disappointed. He wasn't dressed like a bug and he didn't bring any bugs with him, my nephew was quick to point out. But when Stefan announced that he would be looking for bugs, my nephew gamely volunteered to help out. He just wasn't all that happy when he found out Stefan's plans for the bugs they found, like the wasp's nest in the bathroom window.

So, I chronicle this for my little two and a half year old nephew. My sister blames herself for not better explaining what was going to happen, but it's not her fault the little guy is so capable of putting things together, even if he makes the wrong picture sometimes.

Welcome to the real world, little man. May its wonders outnumber its disappointments.