Show The Herald Journal Logan Utah Tuesday July 28 1987 It wasn't a great day to be a frog or a toad or any other green creature with a propensity for jumping But it was a good Pioneer Day weekend to be a kid in Trenton and to scoop up one of those green frogs (or toads — the judges weren't fussy) out of plastic buckets and to set them racing in the best Mark Twain tradition Some of the racers were less Seth AIlsop (top than enthusiastic so their jockeys such as Owen and Buttars (middle photo) urged them on with photo) their own hot breaths The rules said no touching but that didn't stop frog owners who were divided into heats by ages (theirs not their frogs') from stomping behind in encouragement Luckily no casualties resulted from this and the contest went off if not smoothly at least bloodlessly Judges didn't even disqualify those who in the passion of the contest nudged their frogs with their shoes Neither were they overly worried about which frog belonged to who One father brought a PHOTOS: bucketful for frogless would-b- e competitors and many kids shared racers — the ones anyway who didn't manage to escape in the ANNE WEIS confusion Take it from one who knows: easy isn’t always best Toilet paper wars are raging in our neighborhood So for the past three Sunday mornings I’ve walked downstairs to find our landlord's yard festooned with streamers of white or pink or blue This hasn’t bothered me a great deal especially since I’m not the one who nas to clean up the mess (Because the night raiders are their friends the landlord's kids nave to pick the hanging from the apple trees on the boulevard) But although I haven’t been distressed personally by these midnight TP orgies I’ve been disturbed by certain philosophical issues they’ve called to mind I've wondered what urges are behind the custom — is it some kind of adolescent mating ritual? Or is it a plot to drive up the price of this basic commodity by making the demand exceed the supply? And pricing Charmin in the store I've pondered the waste of it After all think what other uses that toilet paper could be put to (Or don't think — this is after ail a family non-edibl- es newspaper) Anyway our landlord’s daughter set my mind at rest last week as she carefully unwrapped the last loops off the low hanging branches of a blue and folded them neatly before stacking Sruce a clean garbage can “We don’t know who did it yet" she told me “But we’re saving this until we find out Then didate for governor Jufie Clark Simon h Other Xtods we’ll we'll fix them back" Such a frugal attitude (let alone such a capacity for revenge) I wouldn’t have expected to find in one so young but then kids never seem to play life the easy way They prefer for instance jumping off a retaining wall to the boring and unchallenging task of walking down the stairs And they like sweeping a marshmallow back and forth across glowing coals until it reaches the fleeting moment of perfect ooziness They much prefer performing this delicate and complicated operation to confection in popping the raw their mouths and eating it without any fuss or bother or mess They may face their chores with a different attitude But in doing things that they’re serious about kids seem to know instinctively that what’s easiest isn’t always what's best I first heard this idea expressed when I was interning on the New Rockford ND newspaper run by an unsuccessful Republican can cool-head- ed 6-f- stick-impal- ed gelatin-cum-sug- ar Ed Dougherty shook his head at me one night when he saw that I'd just pasted up a headline that was three counts short of filling out the line “You should never short yourself more than two counts" he counseled me And then he offered the words of wisdom that I remember with guilt every time I decide to opt for ease over excellence That’s quite often since I've always been at core a lazybones Even as a child I flamed my marshmallows rather than taking the time to toast them slowly When my parents exclaimed about the soot streaks on my lips I claimed I liked the crunch of the char My husband isn't lazy at all but he is interested in accomplishing tasks with the utmost efficiency so the other night as I tried to practice the rite of patience over our still slowing grill — I'm not Catholic but I do believe in penance for past sins — he snatched my still anemic marshmallow from my hand Seconds later he strutted back with a blob the size of an orange quivering on a paper plate “You'd never believe what happens to a marshmallow when you put it in the microwave!" he exclaimed I had to believe my eyes however I grabbed and rushed to the kitchen my bagof where Duane proceeded to experiment with the best way to zap a marshmallow Jet-Puffe- ds After producing a few aberrations resembling The Marshmallow That Ate Salt Lake City he discovered that placing a raw one in the center of a graham cracker and subjecting it to the defrost cycle for exactly 13 seconds resulted in an impressively inflated confection Squishing a chocolate kiss into the center of the sticky bloom and zapping it for five more seconds created a treat that made up in sweetness what it lacked in elegance Somehow though that sweetness stuck in my throat — probably because I could sap marshmallows just about as fast as I could eat them And freed from the necessity of twirling: them over coals at just the right rate and just the the right distance from the heat I could eat them pretty fast I knew how to deal with the choking sensation however It was a familiar one thanks to TV’s coverage of the congressional hearings on the Iran arms sales I've been finding a lot of things hard to swallow the last couple of weeks as I’ve listened to people in positions of power explain why they didn’t go through the inconvenient and slow process of formulating public policy through public consensus “You know" I told my husband as I poured myself a glass of cold water my hand sticky from emptying the marshmallow bag “I'm beginning to realize that sometimes what's easy ‘ really isn't what's best" |