Robert's Blog

A frog hopped out of the pond one day. He paused for a minute making frog noises and then continued to hop along. It was dark out. Nobody really cared about this frog and it wouldn't have matter anyway, because he was only a frog, and frogs don't get sad when no one cares about them. Sadness is an emotion and there must be certain brain structures present before emotions can be experienced. The frog just hopped along.

He was a young from, perhaps a month or two old. He had an awareness of sorts. An awareness of his environment, but he couldn't really think about things. He couldn't plan what he might want to do the next day, or who he might want to play with. Of course, frogs don't play. They just hop around and eat bugs and make a big splash when they hop into the water. He continued to hop along.

A couple of hours later he reached a road. He did not know what a road was because he was a frog and frogs don't know such things. He did sense something was different. The road was still radiating some heat from earlier that day and, of course, there was no grass. But this frog had never been to the road before so didn't really know what to think about it. He just continued to hop along and just happened to be hopping to the other side of the road. That wasn't his intention to hop to the other side, it was just how the frog's path and the road happened to intersect. He continued on his way.

As the frog hopped toward the other side he noticed something different. Occasionally, he observed some distant glowing lights that got brighter and brighter and then very quickly pass by with a loud noise and a gust of wind. He enjoyed this gust of wind. It made him blink his little frog eyes. This was such a new and different experience that the frog paused to feel the breeze again as those glowing lights flashed by. Possibly for the first time ever, this frog wondered about something. What were these strange lights and why did the wind blow each time the light passed. He was beginning to experience a flicker of something special. Was it joy, happiness, excitement? The frog didn't know what this feeling was inside of him, but he wanted to express himself somehow. So he made a decision; possibly the first real conscious decision ever made by a frog. When he saw the next glowing light he took a great big gulp of air, maybe the biggest gulp of air in his whole life. The light was getting brighter. The sound was getting louder. If he timed it just right he could make the most beautiful frog noise ever, right as the wind gusted. The frog opened his mouth and, right as the light started to flash by, released his ....

Right at that moment a big truck ran over the frog and the frog died in an instant, never to be heard from again. And no one missed the frog, or even cared, because no one ever realized he was gone. However, the truck driver, unlike the other drivers, did noticed the frog on the highway. He turned his steering wheel ever so slightly, but just enough to ensure that the wheels of his truck and the croaking frog met on this fateful day.