Last year, my roommate Christie didn't realize how serious this fear was and brought a frog home. She told me she had a "present" for me and when she pulled the slimy little green monster from behind her back to show me, I screamed (loudly) and began to sob uncontrollably. My roommate Kristen, who was standing in my room at the time, quickly shut my door and just hugged me until I calmed down. Needless to say, Christie felt awful. But none of my roommates has tried to pull that one on me again.
I've had this fear since I was little. During the summers, when I was staying with my grandparents, Mamaw would take me to my Aunt's house (which was only about 2 miles away) to swim in her pool. This is where it started.
Every time I went swimming, there were dead frogs in the pool, waiting to be fished out with the net. If there was a frog anywhere in the pool, dead or alive, I wouldn't get in. One day, I was swimming and a live frog got tangled in my hair. That was the deal breaker. The frogs have been my enemies ever since.
So today, when I was in class and learned that one of my art history professors has an upcoming show called The Frog Story, in which she used frogs that went belly-up in her pool, I knew it could not be good. To the right is a sample of her work. My professor is very talented and I'm sure that to someone that doesn't have frog fear, this would be wonderful. But in my case, this is the stuff of nightmares.
